In terror of the Ape God’s power
I changed my person in that hour,
Cast off the livery of my clan,
Over unlawful hills I ran,
I soiled me with forbidden earth.
In nakedness of second birth
I scorched away the Snake’s red eyes
Tattoed for name about my thighs,
And slew the Sacred Bull oppressed
With passion on my breast.
The girls of my new tribe are cold,
Amazon, scarred, not soft to hold.
They seek not men, nor are they sought,
Whose children are not theirs, but bought
From outlaw tribes who dwell in trees—
Tamed apes suckle these.
The young men of the tribe are such
That knife or bow they dare not touch,
But in close watching of the skies
And reckoning counts they dim their eyes.
Closed, each by each, in thoughtful bars
They plot the circuits of the stars,
And frozen music dulls their need
Of drink and man-flesh greed.
They hold that virtue from them slips
When eye greets eye or lips touch lips;
Down to the knee their broad beards fall
And hardly are they men at all.
Possessions they have none, nor schools
For tribal duties, nor close rules,
No gods, no rites, no totem beasts,
No friendships, no love feasts.
Now quit, as they, of gong-roused lust,
The leap of breasts, the scattering dust,
In hermit splendour at my glass
I watch the skies’ procession pass,
Tracing my figures on the floor
Of planets’ paths and comets’ lore;
In calm amaze I cloak my will,
I gaze, I count, until
Harsh from his House the Bull roars out,
Forked lightning leaps his points about,
Tattoos his shape upon the sky:
Night anger fills the Serpent’s eye
With desolating fire for one
Who thought the Serpent’s days were done,
And girlish titterings from the trees
Loosen my firm knees.
THE RED RIBBON DREAM
As I stood by the stair-head in the upper hall
The rooms to left and right were locked as before.
It was senseless to hammer at an unreal door
Painted on the plaster of a ten-foot wall.
There was half-light here, piled darkness beyond
Rising up sheer as the mountain of Time,
The blank rock-face that no thought can climb,
Girdled around with the Slough of Despond.
I stood quite dumb, sunk fast in the mire,
Lonely as the first man, or the last man,
Chilled to despair since evening began,
Dazed for the memory of a lost desire.