Life-and-Destruction                                                            Page 28

The instinct is to kill what seems to be threatening life itself. The Maker turns into Killer:

I struck again and again.

Slender in black and red

he lies, and his icy glance

turns outward, clear and dead.

The "day as clear as fire" is now focussed in an "icy glance", "clear and dead."

Both life and death are "clear". In death the "glance turns outwards": on one

level there is no more life force burning within; but in that very space of death

there is the opening of the "untouched quick of life / where lover, brother and

murderer still are one" ("The City Asleep", C.P.p.49). The poem changes, with

a movement as quick as the nimble snake, from a description of frightening

external events to an inner identification with the "enemy":

But nimble my enemy

as water is, or wind.

He has slipped from his death aside

and vanished into my mind.

He has vanished whence he came,

my nimble enemy;

and the ants come out to the snake

and drink at his shallow eye.

The repetition of "nimble", "enemy", and "vanished", highlights not only the

swift and cunning agility of the serpent but also the fact that he has vanished

'whence he came" - back into the mind of the Killer where he is then seen as

the dark unconscious. The "black horror" is within and is seen as "enemy".

But the unconscious is not necessarily an enemy. It may also be a source of

imagination and creativity. The serpent symbol is complex, as will be shown.

It can represent wisdom as well as "black horror".