Where still the sallow death’s-head ticks
As stars burn down like candle-wicks.
COLD BRANCH IN THE BLACK AIR
WHO taps? You are not the wind tapping?
No! Not the wind!
You straining and moaning there,
Are you a cold branch in the black air
Which the storm has skinned?
No! Not a cold branch!
Not the wind!
Who are you? Who are you?
But you loved me once,
You drank me like wine.
The dead wood simmers in my skull. I am rotten.
And your blood is red still and you have forgotten,
And my blood was yours once and yours mine!
Are you there still? O fainter, O further ... nothing!
Nothing taps!
Surely you straining and moaning there,
You were only a cold branch in the black air?
... Or a door perhaps?
I SEEK A WILD STAR
WHAT seek you in this hoarse hard sand
That shuffles from your futile hand?
Your limbs are wry. With salt despair
All day the scant winds freeze your hair.
What mystery in the barren sand
Seek you to understand?
All day the acute winds’ finger-tips
Flay my skin and cleave my lips.
But though like fame about my skull
Leap the gibes of the cynic gull,
I shall not go from this place. I
Seek through all curved vacancy
Though the sea taunt me and frost scar,
I seek a star, a star!
Why seek you this, why seek you this
Of all distraught futilities?
The tide slides closer. The tide’s teeth
Shall bite your body with keen death!
Of all unspaced things that are
Vain, vain, most hideously far,
Why seek you then a star?