An architect of ruin onion-eyed
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry
Has cast the die of quick finality
Among the cheese-mites in this gap of time.
Through Chaos: murmurs, stumblings, hordes that rend
The fabric which is called reality.
The light, which was a sluice of molten gold,
The crystal winds, disperse in empty air.
The deep red empty holes which were our eyes
Sense only burstings of electric globes.
Louder the heat, like vitriol, wounds our ears
Burning with dull blue thunder.
And then—a tune upon the piccolo,
One of the musical Unemployed, I know,
Or some stray angel with pink sugar wings
Trying to see the cheerful side of things!
In the Train de Luxe
“IT is dangerous to lean out of the window.”
No doubt, when meteors shoot athwart the night.
No doubt, no doubt; and yet it haunts the sight.
I read, re-read this ponderous advice
In French and English; play a game of dice
With mental clouds through cannonades of hours,
With foamless islands legioned with lush flow’rs,
Prismatic juicy glades bee-pasturing.
“In case of danger you must pull the ring.”
A girl arranges a mellifluous grin:
Eternal teas and afternoons begin
To lurk within the forests of the mind
With vividness that cuts it like a wind.
And while my nostrils draw the vital air,
They quiver to discern the sweat of hair
In awkward crevices! Signal d’Alarme
Recalls the fact that I am safe from harm.
I count, re-count each pendulum and beat.
Pardie! the train has swollen in the heat;
Freighted with smuts he heaves his metal breasts,
Nor heeds the broad and burning moon’s behests.
(The moon is lingering and luminous.
Mired in a wrinkling silk diaphanous
She floats a supple pose upon the air
And whispers invitations.)
“I don’t care!”
The train replies; although his body glows,
He is austere as tempest-sifted snows,
Pursuing moral dumb-bell exercise
To muscle-burst criterion; he defies
Flesh and its shuddering spurts of harlotry.
Pavilioned on hills of chastity,
“I do not care a damn,” the train replies.
The Prodigal Son
THE young man yawned with feigned inconsequence
Of manner; boredom exquisite; a fence
To hide the quick explosions in his soul.
He sucked at his surroundings, and the whole
Grim agony of his dull youth returned,
The blue fins of his sullen eyelids burned,
He could have mouthed a curse, an oath obscene:
For horror at the glib familiar scene
A clayey lump stuck blistered in his throat.
Chrysallic faces, garlic, myosote,
And rows of beans and artichokes, a field
Interminably patterned, jigged and reeled
Along the corridors of memory.
“Is childhood happy? dismal fallacy!
And yet I am not one of those who think
That lilies smell not, orange-flowers stink.”
Here had the best hours coolly leaked away
Like driblets from a tap, a disarray
Of tumbled hispid stars; a clean dry sleep
Of stunted senses, where he could not weep
For ignorance. And ever shone the moon;
The warm sky twinkled like a chopped lagoon.
“This world is but a foggy circumstance,”
He thought, “where timid mortals must advance
To claim their rights and drain what cup of joy
It has to offer, now no longer boy
I’ll cease to play the rôle of Tantalus,
But leave this place, discharge a blunderbuss
Against my present drawling mode of life.
I’m still too young to bear the plague of wife,
And though ’tis true, when all fine things be said,
I’m welcome to a partner for my bed,
To kiss a gaping throat of flaccid silk;
I fear her plump white breasts would hold no milk
To suckle babes on, after I had done
With kissing at her nipples; one by one
Each new-born babe would wither up and die.”
He picked his teeth and fetched a windy sigh,
Informed his father of his bold resolve,
Who told him of the cost it would involve:
So, settling up accounts, he bade farewell
To all the damned of his domestic hell.