NERVES
You are like an ebony sea with derelict ships,
Cold as my lover is cold;
Until Beauty rises like the moon and whips
You into shivering gold.
You are like a tree-top at the bleak last hour
When birds to the tombs belong;
Until Beauty blows like the dawn, and you flower
Into buds of innumerable song.
You are like a virginal and a most pale
Girl in a secret mead;
Until Beauty, like the indomitable Male,
Enflames you with innermost seed.
You are like a corpse with worms in the holes of the head,
Between a board and a board;
Until Beauty shouts like the Trump that convulses the dead,
And you enter the House of the Lord.
A POET
He has a voice so exquisite
You can hardly hear it at all:
Tragedy's there and there is wit,
Both faint as a leaf's fall.
His feet pass hardly like human feet,
Five-toed and leathern-shod,
But more with the sound of bended wheat,
Swayed by the skirts of God.
His eyes are a wistful and grey sea,
Till a song stir his blood.
Then are they flowers that suddenly
Open from the pent bud.