Prison | I | The dreadful days go up and up, to fall
Through twilight to the sleepless dusk again,
Like tortured flies upon a window pane.
Wingless or broken-winged,
They crawl and crawl ...
Meaningless, striving — nowhere after all,
Till one is tired of heeding.
Tired.
A stain of drab unloveliness the days remain
Unmoving now, save that across the wall,
A patch of sun behind a shadow of bars,
Creeps in a stupor.
Greys,
Grins bloodily,
Falters and dies.
Outside a day may slip
From noon-glow to a miracle of stars
With hours that flush and flood eternity;
Whilst here
The stagnant waters drip ... and drip. | | II | They tell me I have sinned; that long ago
(Weeks — or a cycle of eternity)
This thing of dead desire lived lustily,
Was stirred with passion, and sinned.
It may be so;
As seas or hills may be.
I only know God's world has shrunken,
And that misery,
Shrinking my heart, has closed her walls on me,
Till in the dead, still soul the senses grow
Carious as the ulcer of thought eats deep.
Heavy, the slow lusts pace the barren mind
From end to end.
Barred door and window,
Wall inexorable.
And the horrors creep on padded feet like warders.
Then the blind, pitiful night
When hot tears scald and fall. | | III | Grey day-break and the silence of the cell:
The dull, numb pain of waking,
Stillness ...
Fear clutching oblivion;
And then to hear
The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell,
A crash of doors,
Loud-clanging tins,
The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near,
Bursts at the last about you.
Clangour.
Queer delight of movement.
Then ... the door shuts.
Hell darkens about you with the turning key,
The silence burns and sears you like a flame;
It battens as the worm that never dies;
Crawls back from distant noises; palpably
Lurks through the rhythm of the feet of shame,
Watching and watching out of hooded eyes. | Contents / Contents, p. 3
The Sixth Day "And God said 'Let us make man in our image and let him have dominion'...." God made you in His image, yet I saw
You stoop and seize a blind mole from the snare.
Blind.
Blind with terror ... Blind
Your teeth gleamed bare behind the taut, white lips.
The trapper's law knows neither hate nor love.
You watched it paw,
Frantic with lust of life, the yielding air
And were amused.
God's Image!
Did you care, pitying one moment, see the swift hands claw
For life and darkness, know and hate your trap?
I saw your knuckles gleam, your hand swing free;
A cry;
The blind face crashed against the wall.
Then death and stillness and — —
You grinned.
Mayhap,
Snaring the blind mole of humanity,
God made you in His image after all.
Contents / Contents, p. 3
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