O, why not let me wallow, bleed,
Riot and guzzle in red greed,
And leave my doom-gripped body tossed
Into an agony of frost?
Cruel, marauding throats, begone!
Before I hurl my curse upon
Your youth, oh loathsome things, to try
Torturing me with purity!
Words
IN long prim rows the formal words distend,
Stuffed birds with loosely-fitting beaks, they glare
With beady eyes pathetically vague
Beneath their sober domes of dusty glass.
(Pale frigid flute-voiced children promenade
To suck the air into their fading lungs,
Native to soot: the tortoise-shell effect
Of sunsets barred by buildings smug and bare
And sleek pat streets of asphalt: gamins drab
Whose nightingales the Cockney sparrows are.
When furry frost hangs white about the chin,
These too will cough a dirge, no doubt, and die!)
O words, assert yourselves! from long prim rows
Trip out and weave new patterns with the clouds
That preen their swan-wings spread upon the air,
Then loll like tufts of lilac heavily;
Lush coolness, limpid nebulousness; where
The dove-tame zephyrs leap in shapely loops
To fill the windy trammel of a skirt,
Or must we oil you with celebral sweat?
When levers, springs and cogs are oiled you’ll come
Naked and unembarrassed by the moon.
. . . . . . . . .
The words have answered, lo, the words advance
No longer blocked in patterns, dribble out
In pleasant drops, with bird-quick flickers trip
Into a dissonance or discord: so,
Sharp darts of dappled sound to cleave the ear.
Some strut, and laughing madly, stridently,
These crack their wind-swift fingers, or like ants
Waving antennæ, struggle bravely on
Beneath their heavy burdens, one or two
Twinkle, then flutter off like hueless leaves,
Or dart and flash like wagtails on a pool,
Some fired with sulphurous glow, and some askew
Sway perilously, like a drunkard’s hat.
But what are these with puckered, pointed ears
That flit among the crowds like strips of tape?
They seem to stumble into tragedies.
“Oh, we shall twine you merry wreaths,” they say,
“Gay wreaths, festoons of entrails for your brow!”
Their eyes like little glasses of liqueur
Glitter and frighten me: within, without,
Words with hot breath hiss subtly venomous,
A million droning insects in my ears,
A million mottled thrushes in my mind.
Greenness Unsecreted
IN ombre gateways I had loitered, stopped
To speak unto my nearest brother, Toad,
Within the forest where the cobras propped
Green twists on frothy treetops, their abode:
“Toad, I salute you! in your chilly eye
I see the mignonette of modesty.”
He did not answer, crouching like a sin,
Steeped in a lethargy too dull to pierce,
Centuple wisdom folded in his skin—
He stared with humble stare that was not fierce,
And yet within that stare I seemed to know
The stare that maddened Hieronymo.
I followed then a wedge of thoughtful cranes
Who fled across the silence drearily
From desolations and eternal rains
Across the frozen ridge of Rhodope,
The stars grown piteous of my misery
Dropped golden tears into the poem-sea.
I have since dived, bathed in the poem-sea,
In spilt genethliacs of amber wine
Mellowed to milk, like turtle-feathers free
Floating and flurry on the teasing brine,
Below, I saw those youths that died of love
And wandered with them in the myrtle grove.[A]
And when I rose a slender oaten pipe
Made music in the entrails of my ears,
Rich bandaliers of fruit grown pulpy-ripe
Moistened the membranes and dissolved my fears,
I could remember at her day of birth
How Flora with her daisies strewed the earth.