Silence—

Somewhere on earth

There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.

The trees stand bolt upright

Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.

There is a purpose in Heaven,

But for me

Nothing.

I should like to say to the world:

I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;

Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting the sky,

Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,

Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,

Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.

I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour

Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and shout,

In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled stallions,

Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....

But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,

To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,

I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola

Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes

And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.

You pass as in a drugged delirium

Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;

You sing a blasphemous Te Deum

To harlot virgins, and a fraction

Of your fulginous colour passes,

Stains my spirit's great conception

As it dips into your glasses.

I that am the sole exception

To your stillborn, false devices,

I that know you, I that hate you,

I that drank now spit your vices

Through my loathing reinstate you;

Dive once more into the stagnance,

Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,

Concentrate your cruel fragrance,

Steal your flowers before I sink you,

Lift with hate instead of praises,

Show you honour of my scorning,

Garlanded you go to blazes

With my rhymes for your adorning!

O faces that look so coldly at me,

Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,

Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.

You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,

While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,

With tinkling bells that harass my calm,

Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.

Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,

How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?

The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...

Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,

Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,

You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,

And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea

To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your dress,—

How I might love you and weep for you,

Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs

If you could understand my singing,

If you could understand my love!

But you are waltzing with your marionettes

And marching to the music of the clock—

I cannot bear you to watch me

With those cold eyes through which I see,

Emptiness only and dust.

I see myself in many different dresses,

In many moods, and many different places;

All gold amid the grey where solemn faces

Are silence to my mirth—a flame that blesses

From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...

Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces

Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,

Disdainful of their slander or caresses.

I see myself the child of many races,

Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;

Within my soul a thousand weary traces

Of pain and joy and passionate excesses—

Eternal beauty that our brief love chases

With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.