TO SCRIABINE: L’EXTASE
NOT with the drums, the throbbing scarlet drums, Not with the voice of a silver flute, Not with the brazen clangour of cymbals, Nor the trumpets slitting the silence; Not with the maelstrom of sound Monstrous, prodigious, Comes ecstasy. But with stillness As when a flame burns unflickering In far, empty places; With the quiet of a leaf falling in the forest; With the hush of the elevation of the Host.
ADAM ASLEEP
FAR away I hear the voices of four rivers flowing, Wings in the thicket, and the four winds blowing. Adam sleeps in Eden. In this still place I lie within his circling arm and look upon his face.
God walks in the garden when the day is cool, But the face of Adam is far more beautiful; He is like the splendour of the sun at noon, And the slope of his body like the white young moon.
Of what is he dreaming as he lies at rest? Of God in the Garden? Or Lilith’s breast? Adam sleeps in Eden, but down in the brake I watch the cool glitter of a painted snake.