III
Do 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—