Senlin a biography

Conrad Potter Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia, on August 5, 1889.
Senlin: A Biography.
It seems to be a description of a red-haired, pipe-smoking, small man who can also become a landscape and a tree and can travel through history.

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I. HIS DARK ORIGINS

Senlin sits before us, and we see him.

He smokes his pipe before us, and we hear him.

Is he small, with reddish hair,

Does he light his pipe with meditative stare,

And a pointed flame reflected in both eyes?

Is he sad and happy and foolish and wise?

Did no one see him enter the doors of the city,

Looking above him at the roofs and trees and skies?

'I stepped from a cloud', he says, 'as evening fell;

I walked on the sound of a bell;

I ran with winged heels along a gust;

Or is it true that I laughed and sprang from dust? . . .

Has no one, in a great autumnal forest,

When the wind bares the trees,

Heard the sad horn of Senlin slowly blown?

Has no one, on a mountain in the spring,

Heard Senlin sing?

Perhaps I came alone on a snow-white horse,--

Riding alone from the deep-starred night.

Perhaps I came on a ship whose sails were music,--

Sailing from moon or sun on a river of light.'

He lights his pipe with a pointed flame.

'Yet, there were many autumns before I came,

And many spr

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II. HIS FUTILE PREOCCUPATIONS

I am a house, says Senlin, locked and darkened,

Sealed from the sun with wall and door and blind.

Summon me loudly, and you'll hear slow footsteps

Ring far and faint in the galleries of my mind.

You'll hear soft steps on an old and dusty stairway;

Peer darkly through some corner of a pane,

You'll see me with a faint light coming slowly,

Pausing above some gallery of the brain . . .

I am a city . . . In the blue light of evening

Wind wanders among my streets and makes them fair;

I am a room of rock . . . a maiden dances

Lifting her hands, tossing her golden hair.

She combs her hair, the room of rock is darkened,

She extends herself in me, and I am sleep.

It is my pride that starlight is above me;

I dream amid waves of air, my walls are deep.

I am a door . . . before me roils the darkness,

Behind me ring clear waves of sound and light.

Stand in the shadowy street outside, and listen--

The crying of violins assails the night . . .

My walls are deep, but the cries of music pi

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