I stuffed my ears with faded stars

From the little universe of music pent in me,

For your fiendish ripple must be heard but once:

Passing twice through ears, it looses

Its thin divine kinkiness....

I felt it undulate my soul—

Lavender water, pitted and heaved to huge, uneasy circles.

Never will my crumbling tongue hug the drying sides of the basin,

Slaying the last, delicate drops.

Fire have I tasted;

It has flicked me but never burnt—

I shall leave it before it breaks into me.

One flame will I wrap about my browned skin—a deed accomplished—

To speak to me on the way.

Then will I go quickly, lest the other fire-beings scorch my slow feet.

Pits a trillion times blacker than black,

Fringed with little black grasses, each holding

The jerking, smoldering ghost of a thought.

(O deep-aged pupils and lashes!)

At the bottom of the pits lay the phosphorescent bones,

Of many souls that have cried and died.

I think you clutched one of your soul-bones with irreverent hands,

And struck your cringing violin.

A dwindling gift are you, laughter.

Old men have I seen, counterfeiting you on street-corners.

Never shall I join them,

For not in scorn do I laugh, but in praise.

Only with my smiles am I lavish;

A different smile for each thought have I.

(O thousands of smiles waiting for the labor of birth!)

To my death-bed will come the wildest smile:

It will be moon-paint on a colorless house.

Heaven and Hell are together.

As we walk home on a street in Heaven, in the evening,

Those in Hell will stalk past us

(For Hell is a condition, not a place)

And when we return at dawn will we still see them—

Men bearing infants born dead,

Kissing the inert purple cheeks;

(For the kiss will be the one punishment of Hell);

Men and women holding the severed heads of those they once spat on.

Before a king kissing the head of his queen will we stop,

To give him a kind word;

Or before an anarchist clasping the head of the king;

Or before a woman carrying the head of the anarchist—

Each unaware of the other’s presence.

We will see them walking up and down the streets of Heaven

For countless years,

Till the day when the heads will disappear,

And the head-bearers build homes next to our own.

Lovers married a thousand years in Heaven

And in that which lies beyond Heaven

(For Heaven is but the first rest of a thirstless journey)

Know not each other as we do.

Knowledge is born of a second:

We had our slim second,

And it will live for millions of years.

Only when it reaches the suburbs of Eternity, will it die.