It is late
And the clock is striking thin hours.
But sleep has become a terror to me.
Lest I wake in the night
Bewildered,
And stretching out my arms to comfort myself with you.
Clasp instead the cold body of the darkness.
All night it will hunger over me,
And push and undulate against me.
Breathing into my mouth
And passing long fingers through my drifting hair.
Only the dawn can loose me from it,
And the grey streaks of morning melt it from my side.
Bring many candles.
Though they stab my tired brain
And hurt it.
Did the door move, or was it always ajar ?
The gladioli on the table are pale mauve.
I smell pale mauve and blue,
Blue soft like bruises — putrid — oozing —
The air oozes blue — mauve —
And the door with the black line where it does not shut!
I must pass that door to go to bed.
Or I must stay here
And watch the crack
Oozing air.
Is it — air ?
Why do you not sleep. Beloved ?
It is so cold that the stars stand out of the sky
Like golden nails not driven home.
The fire crackles pleasantly.
And I sit here listening
For your regular breathing from the room above.
What keeps you awake, Beloved ?
Is it the same nightmare that keeps me strained with listening
So that I cannot read ?
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book ;
And the South Wind, washing through the room,
Makes the candles quiver.
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter.
And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots
Outside, in the night.
Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love ?
I who have never known sorrow
Wait for it morning and evening;
For the footstep of grief on my threshold,
The drip of tears on my hearthstone,
The pitiless hours of lonely, uncomforted woe.
Never a life without sorrow!
But, oh, when will mine be upon me?
When will the years seem long
That now slip happily by me?
The light of the skies be dimmed
To eyes that are weary with weeping?
There is tropical warmth and languorous life
Where the roses lie
In a tempting drift
Of pink and red and golden light
Untouched as yet by the pruning knife.
And the still, warm life of the roses fair
That whisper "Come,"
With promises
Of sweet caresses, close and pure
Has a thorny whiff in the perfumed air.
There are thorns and love in the roses' bed,
And Satan too
Must linger there;
So Satan's wiles and the conscience stings,
Must now abide--the roses are dead.
The cactus scrawls crude hieroglyphs against the sky;
It reaches with twisted, inquisitive fingers
To clutch the throat of something and question
Why.
The odor of death
In the front of my body.
The odor of death
Before me —
Is there any one
Who would weep for me?
My wife
Would weep for me.
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year . . . and ever days and years . . .
Well?
Have you seen Angélique,
What way she went?
A white robe she wore,
A flickering light near spent
Her pale hand bore.
Have you seen Angélique?
Will she know the place
Dead feet must find,
The grave-cloth on her face
To make her blind?
Have you seen Angélique. . . .
At night I hear her moan,
And I shiver in my bed;
She wanders all alone,
She cannot find the dead.
All day, all day I brush
My golden strands of hair;
All day I wait and wait. . . .
Ah, who is there?
Who calls? Who calls? The gold
Ladder of my long hair
I loose and wait. . . . and wait. . . .
Ah, who is there?
She left at dawn. . . . I am blind
In the tangle of my long hair. . . .
Is it she? the witch? the witch?
Ah, who is there?
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?