Trépak

THE trees sprawl up like trumpets in the night, Great ghosts of once-viridian: but now, Fibred with brittle tufts of massy snow, They creak with burdened whiteness, for the bright Blue-prismed stalactites like wounds of light Are pendulous from their pagoda-boughs. And when a wind whirs in among the trees, As some Silenus fumbling frantic hands Into a cleft of honey, they cast off A whittling dust of little hispid stars. The moon is hungry. Lo! the moon has thinned To finger-nail’s fine fringe; she is forlorn With thought of Spring’s flown hollow spells of joy, When the now-passionless statue of her mind Was tremulous with passion, nescient lips Stammered lush ingenuities of love. Then Summer crackled like a yawn of fire: The big-lipped consummation of desire. A starved, lean-ribbed dog with rheumy eyes Yelps up at her, his poor thin thread of voice Nigh snaps, and trails its note into a growl, Then tumbles, frozen stark, amongst the snow. The barbèd minutes shiver chillily In wait for something. Ho! who’s this, a man? In this torn catafalque of barren boughs? A patriarchal bearded brittle-bones Daft, dazed with drink, shuffles his slipshod feet Scattering sprays of crisply sparkling snow. Death clanks his rusty mail and flaps his wings And ogling, draws the man into a dance: “No more the malady of life unlived With no grand-opera effects; no more Heroic sunsets, agonies of rose To wear you faint; no more the whirlpool’s mist Of good and evil. It shall be revealed There is no meaning, no significance In all this clamour, in this viscous trail Of sentimental sanatoriums. Those frowning stoic caryatides, Who contemplate in decorous solitude This elegant Golgotha of futile birth, Are fraudulent mountebanks; unmanicured, Life’s pointed nails grapple and tear your flanks Without a murmur trembling from your lips, O broken vessel sprayed with broken light, Come to oblivion’s arms; sepulchral night, Inchoate truth await you—they are kind. Close your red lashless eyelids. Death is fair....”