Ventilation

OPEN the window! now that breezes play Over the wrinkled hills; the sweltering day Fused by the wedge-shaped engines of the sun With heat intensive, split as flowers spun Of glass to myriad particles minute With spot-like swiftness, hovers chilled and mute. Now that no far voice cleaves the air or blurs, No plash, no fall of oars, no rumour stirs, And life itself has long outbreathed its lungs— (Or so it seems, for no dim amorous tongues Trouble the foliage, and the moon is full, Unflecked by wind-froth); all seems sorrowful With beauty exanimate, a beauty dead, A subterranean silence where vague dread Puckers the brooding soul until it weeps Terrible heavy tears. The garden sleeps.... Sleeps as the desolate magnificence Of Angkor with its grave mute eloquence Where blistering suns, invectives of the wind Hurl vainly; frenzied storms undisciplined Beat, plunge inanely at the steadfast walls. And no sad throat of nightingale enthralls The quickly-pulsing heart with turbulent song. So massive has the stillness grown, so strong A blood-vessel would burst, a muscle snap, A sane malt mind would rave, grow weak as pap.... Oh aching ears, have you too heard the lips Of silence utter some apocalypse To slake the agony of my desires, To scatter them like ashes of the pyres Of calcined and cremated limbs? but hark In the faint failing distances what spark Of flashed sound quivers? hold your breath, what flush Of fluid moan? The sluice is opened; rush And avalanche of panic-writhing cries. Some soul in anguish is it? vague surmise As of some tragedy—I shudder, shake With fear.... It is the peacocks by the lake!