Architecture

I What manner of building shall we build? Let us design a chastel de chasteté. De pensée.... Never cease to deploy the structure. Keep the laborers shouldering plinths. Pass the whole of life earing the clink of the Chisels of the stone-cutters cutting the stones. II In this house, what manner of utterance shall there be? What heavenly dithyramb And cantilene? What niggling forms of gargoyle patter? Of what shall the speech be, In that splay of marble And of obedient pillars? III And how shall those come vested that come there? In their ugly reminders? Or gaudy as tulips? As they climb the stairs To the group of Flora Coddling Hecuba? As they climb the flights To the closes Overlooking whole seasons? IV Let us build the building of light. Push up the towers To the cock-tops. These are the pointings of our edifice, Which, like a gorgeous palm, Shall tuft the commonplace. These are the window-sill On which the quiet moonlight lies. V How shall we hew the sun, Split it and make blocks, To build a ruddy palace? How carve the violet moon To set in nicks? Let us fix portals, east and west, Abhorring green-blue north and blue-green south. Our chiefest dome a demoiselle of gold. Pierce the interior with pouring shafts, In diverse chambers. Pierce, too, with buttresses of coral air And purple timbers, Various argentines, Embossings of the sky. VI And, finally, set guardians in the grounds, Gray, gruesome grumblers. For no one proud, nor stiff, No solemn one, nor pale, No chafferer, may come To sully the begonias, nor vex With holy or sublime ado The kremlin of kermess. VII Only the lusty and the plenteous Shall walk The bronze-filled plazas And the nut-shell esplanades.