  II crouched upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses, And—listening with dread for the moment of my own silence Rending the flimsy lace of whisperings— My gnome dances before me Behind a fan of smoke, My dwarf squats on my shoulders Tweeking their moulted wings, My ape peers in the mirror of my face Mimicking my soul's gaunt gestures— My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness Blotching the night with howls— My laughter goes whining away on the wind, Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment, Too satiate with humour's emptiness!... IIAh! loveliness with little pointed feet Dancing across the leer of ugliness, Skimming like a gold thread Through a necklace of vile masks— Lifting with lotus fingers The blue arras of nightmare— Loveliness like a delicate silver flute Pressed to a negro's lips— IIIDo you then wish for all those griefs Whose snarling hands you kiss, Kneeling in adoration to a dagger As saints before a cross? You who have tossed all flowers away, Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,— Do you then crave your own blood's offering, Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame? In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet, Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight, You lean across the precipice of time Calling and crying For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter— IVWaiting, Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos— Waiting, Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds, Like listening trees that hug their branches round them, Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms, Waiting like a vast arch of quietness Through which a screaming messenger shall dart— Like a dense hood of silence Pierced by a sword of music— Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges.... 1919 |
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