Chrysalis/Fable

Glenn mentioned this some months  (some many months) back.  I’ve been looking for it, Bro, but my stuff is not all that organized.  It wasn’t in any of the back issues of the Carson-Newman little magazine that I have, although I seem to have lost more along the way than I still have.

So, this wasn’t in the last place I looked for it, but the last place I was looking for something else.

By request, from 1964, then

FABLE

The butterfly

slowly, haltingly emerged,

crept from the chrysalis.

Moist, soft,

with wings still pliant,

still folded

into a small, tight chrysalis shape.

It stepped and held and opened its wings

and beat the air

harder, harder, still harder and faster.

The wings became dry and stiff and strong.

And the butterfly looked all about at the world,

which was beautiful,

and it was conscious of itself and knew its own beauty.

Never before existed such a butterfly.

Its wings were redder than ever a ruby;

they were the color of hard-spurting blood.

Its body was golden

and on its wings were symbols of gold,

pure and glowing

as stormwashed sunset.

It was unique in the world and beautiful.

Then it stretched its wings and flew high

and explored the breeze, low

and tasted a mountain laurel

with leaves in the dark, cool shadow sleek and green

and flowers of pink cream, sweet in the stream-bank sunlight.

And the butterfly was captured, swiftly, in a net.

It was killed and examined and sketched and catalogued,

And in textbooks its picture was given to exemplify

Mutation.

It was studied with cool scientific care:  neat and sharp steel

needles, precisely polished lenses.

Then it was filed

In dusty glass in a back room

and forgotten among crushed cardboard boxes,

Until an undergraduate, searching in the dim room, happened

to glance at the case, which was one among many,

a glance somewhat compassionate,

And he saw that the symbols spoke clear as the

Gold.

And he read,

I am Psyche:  I am soul.