BLOWN through the leaden circles of our hell,
Each wisp of soul, tattered by winds of lust,
Clawed at the voices, like a beaten bell.
No movement ever raised the lifeless dust,
As, blown beneath the night’s enormous pall,
We call to you with goatish prance and paces:
Our lips are red as nights of festival
And hell has dyed its fires upon our faces.
These barren bodies may no children breed
To quench the sun with their corrupted breath
Save these our hearts, our breasts, our bodies feed—
The fruit of love like ours, the worms of death.
Within our brain the darkness slowly fell:
Our eyes’ dark vacuum reflects no days—
No voice, no sight, no thought within our hell—
But only flesh our loneliness allays.
IV
“ET L’ON ENTEND À PEINE LEURS PAROLES”
MONOTONOUSLY fell the rain,
Like thoughts within an empty brain;
The lolling weeds that fattened there
Absorbed the broken lifeless air.
“Do those dim eyes still hold a flame
That leaps to Heaven at my name?”
“Mine eyes would hold God’s face in sight;
But your lips burned away the light.”
“Within your brain the blood runs high?”
“You came like thought; you licked it dry.”