THE LAMENT OF SOPHONIA
You who have wasted this June for me,
Bitter be the seed of your love.
Long midnights by the sea
Have I waited for your return,
Counting the stars—
Bitter be the seed of your love.
And as stars go out in the crocus light of dawn,
As waters drip from a failing fountain,
So passed these days of June.
As a boy strips from a stalk of snap-dragons
The perfect blossoms,
And treads them into the earth,
So you have taken the June days from me—
Bitter be the seed of your love.
On my couch by the sea,
My golden curls loosened,
Resting after the cool ablution of evening waters,
My body white as whitecaps, under the moon,
My eyes large as the fox's lurking in darkness,
I have waited for your return.
May the scourge of Asia mar your beautiful body,
Beloved!
You have wasted my loveliest June.
As the unheeding wind
Drives the falling cherry blossoms
Into the purple waves,
So you have scattered my days of June—
Bitter be the seed of your love!
I have distilled henbane for you,
Beloved,
And put it in a crystal vial.
The moon of October will shine,
Then you will come to me,
Your wanderings and treasons finished!
And when you slip exhausted from my arms
I will give you wine from a golden cup,
And pour the henbane in it—
I shall give you henbane for the poison of defeated love;
I shall kiss your dead lips, Beloved.
Then I shall drink, too.
Our bodies shall feed the worms
As these June days have fed my writhing sorrow,
Beloved murderer of my June!
AT DECAPOLIS
Mark, Chap. V
I
THE ACCUSATION
I am a farmer and live
Two miles from Decapolis.
Where is the magistrate? Tell me
Where the magistrate is!
Here I had made provision
For children and wife,
And now I have lost my all;
I am ruined for life.
I, a believer, too,
In the synagogues.—
What is the faith to me?
I have lost my hogs.
Two thousand hogs as fine
As ever you saw,
Drowned and choked in the sea—
I want the law!
They were feeding upon a hill
When a strolling teacher
Came by and scared my hogs—
They say he's a preacher,
And cures the possessed who haunt
The tombs and bogs.
All right; but why send devils
Into my hogs?
They squealed and grunted and ran
And plunged in the sea.
And the lunatic laughed who was healed,
Of the devils free.
Devils or fright, no matter
A fig or straw.
Where is the magistrate, tell me—
I want the law!
II
JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ
Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear,
If you have wit to understand my plea.
Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear,
Poor man possessed of such is partly free,
Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains
May pluck while running, howling through the mire
And take a little gladness for his pains,
Some fury for unsatisfied desire.
But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew,—
But then this lunatic had rights. You grant
Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew
His baffled spirit. How significant,
As they were legion and so named, the point
Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath.
Desire puts a spirit out of joint.
Swine-devils are for swine, who have no path.
But man with many lusts, what is his way,
Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms?
He prays for night to come, and for the day
Amid the miry places and the tombs.
But hogs run to the sea. And there's an end.
Would I might cast the swinish demons out
From man forever. Yet the word attend.
The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt?
What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved?
What loss of lands and houses, man being free?
Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved,
Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see.
Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth,
Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw;
Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe
Free souls with courage to transgress the law
By casting demons out from self, or those
Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues
Would leave to battle singly with his woes—
What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs?
Which being lost, men play the hypocrite
And make the owner chief in the affair.
You banish me for witchcraft. I submit.
Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.
And into swine where better they belong,
Casting the swinish devils out of men
The devils have their place at last, and then
The man is healed who had them—where's the wrong
Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues
Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud
The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs.
This rule has been the statute from the flood.
Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw.
Is it not so with judges first and last—
You break the law to specialize the law?—
This is the devil that from you I cast.