  I AH, stern, cold man, How can you lie so relentless hard While I wash you with weeping water! Do you set your face against the daughter Of life? Can you never discard Your curt pride's ban? You masquerader! How can you shame to act this part Of unswerving indifference to me? You want at last, ah me! To break my heart Evader! You know your mouth Was always sooner to soften Even than your eyes. Now shut it lies Relentless, however often I kiss it in drouth. It has no breath Nor any relaxing. Where, Where are you, what have you done? What is this mouth of stone? How did you dare Take cover in death! II Once you could see, The white moon show like a breast revealed By the slipping shawl of stars. Could see the small stars tremble As the heart beneath did wield Systole, diastole. All the lovely macrocosm Was woman once to you, Bride to your groom. No tree in bloom But it leaned you a new White bosom. And always and ever Soft as a summering tree Unfolds from the sky, for your good, Unfolded womanhood; Shedding you down as a tree Sheds its flowers on a river. I saw your brows Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom, And I shed my very soul down into your thought; Like flowers I fell, to be caught On the comforted pool, like bloom That leaves the boughs. III Oh, masquerader, With a hard face white-enamelled, What are you now? Do you care no longer how My heart is trammelled, Evader? Is this you, after all, Metallic, obdurate With bowels of steel? Did you never feel?— Cold, insensate, Mechanical! Ah, no!—you multiform, You that I loved, you wonderful, You who darkened and shone, You were many men in one; But never this null This never-warm! Is this the sum of you? Is it all nought? Cold, metal-cold? Are you all told Here, iron-wrought? Is this what's become of you?
|
|
