DECADENT DUET
Torban
Lightly sharp and even,
Your voice is the sound of an airplane
Darting high above your unreceptive face.
Your voice is unrelated
To the structure of your face,
And on your lips an echo merely rides,
The pagan shimmerings of your face
Receive the voice with a subtle disbelief.
Indeed, your intellectuality,
Speeding though spaces over your head,
Must seem of little consequence
To the nymph who listens far below.
That you are thus divided is not strange,
But you contain a third Self
And it regards the other two
With a grave and patient interest.
Woman
Phantasmagoria,
Ruling arabesques of words,
Your attenuated variations
Of thought and emotion will enrage
The blunt convictions of more earthly men.
The pagan rituals of my face
Distrust your words, and my mind,
Dropping its voice from fancied heights,
Resents the indirectness of your style.
But the third Self within me,
Generous and immobile of face,
Cares only for the skill
With which you elevate
Vainly celebrating shades
Of thought and protesting emotion.
Color, form, and substance—
Three complaining slaves
Engraving the details of prearranged tasks
Within stationary brains and hearts.
My third Self would release them
To an original abandon
That exchanges intangible countries,
With a gracious, gaudy treason.
Torban
Lacking a better name
I will call your third Self “soul.”
The ancient, merry game
Of fighting over labels
Must not dismay our duet.
To most men soul exists
Only when their sensual weariness
Needs to be gilded with a religion
Or a deified memory of flesh.
We contain a lurking wanderer
Upon our inner roads, and he
Sometimes stops to drop pitying hands
Upon the forms of thought and emotions
Branded with scores of prejudices.
Men have hated him for centuries,
And hatred, symbol of sly cowardice,
Has draped its desire in false scorn
And named him Decadence.
Thus ends our decadent duet.
Come, there are roads on which we must pirouette.
The proper contrast will be furnished
By philosophers, scientists, and sensualists.