VII
You have a morning-glory face
Whose edges are sensitive to light
And curl in beneath the burden of a smile.
Remembered silence returns to the morning-glory
And lattices its curves
With shades of golden reverberations.
Then the morning-glory’s heart careens to loves
Whose scent beats on the sky-walls of your soul.
VIII
You draw my heart about you, as a cloak,
And your words steal over it like a reluctant color:
A color of pain that fears to die.
My heart ripples with your slight turning
But sometimes moves when you are still,
Beckoning to longings that have not reached your mouth.
IX
Sedate and archaic, a twilight-frilled haze
Walks over the meadows like rolled-out centuries
Quivering in sprightly welcome.
Trees pushed down by silence;
Trees lolling in comely abandon;
Trees pungently flamboyant,
Their leaves spinning in the wind’s golden elusiveness.
Trees probing the shrilly sensitive sunset
Like little, laced nightmares leaning
Upon a scarlet breast;
Trees sprinkling their stifled mockery
Upon the blue tomb of the air;
Trees, are you silenced beings
Whitening into the winding paradise
Of old loves seeking a second death?
And has this archaic, twilight-frilled haze
Moulded me to your semblance?
X
The wrinkled grimaces of eastern skies
Are caught on the Chinese mirrors of your eyes
And lie, pallid and benign.
Your mouth is a senile dragon
Spitting fire-fly words from its vermillion shroud.
Your cheeks are shrunken silences of Gods
Paling out upon ivoried Nirvanas of silk.
Your face holds fugitive bits of your heart
That wandered away and returned to rest.
XI
Your body was puzzling, like a half-made figure
Till the final shaping of your voice came
And riotous secrets of lines curved out
And trembled upon your limbs.
Then silence touched your body to motion:
Your limbs released fleeing andantes of pain
And your heart flung little crescents of budding caresses
Into the waiting hunger of your eyes.