FOUR NOCTURNES

WITHIN the long black avenues of Night Go pageants of delight, With masks of glass the night has stained with wine, Hair lifted like a vine;— And all the coloured curtains of the air Were fluttered. Passing there, The sounds seemed warring suns; and music flowed As blood; the mask’d lamps showed Tall houses light had gilded like despair: Black windows, gaping there. Through all the rainbow spaces of our laughter Those pageants followed after; The negress Night, within her house of glass Watched the processions pass.

BLOW out the candles. Let the dance begin. Already, pale as Sin, The candles weep and pry like living things ... They dance, who have no wings. More vast and black than endless sleep, this room. Time beats his empty drum Whose hollow sound is echoed in our eyes— Deep wells where no moon lies. A crumpled paper mask hides every face— Creased to a smile of grace, With eyelids gilded, so the bitter tears Make music for men’s ears. These masks, some coloured like an August moon, Or white, as sands that swoon Within Time’s hour-glass, some as grey as rain,— Still mimic joy and pain. Thin pointed rags and tags edge our attire ... Bright plumes?... or tongues of fire, Whose painted laughter cracks the gilded sky Of this flat empery That has no soil where any flower may root, Nor rest for weary foot, But endless leagues of mirror: such the ground That no horizons bound,— Carved topaz water;—sound a mirror seems! O! nakedness of dreams Beneath the blinding radiance of hot skies Where no sun lives or dies. . . . Now that the dusty, creaking curtain, Day, Is folded, laid away, Each masked dancer is both piercèd Heart And Dream, its poiniard. Small winds creep from Infinity.... A flame Our blown hair, white as shame. Those seeds of worlds, the stars, are nought but blown Red tinsel from a Clown; The candles, living things to dance and pry: Out! hard Reality!

BLOWN through the leaden circles of our hell, Each wisp of soul, tattered by winds of lust, Clawed at the voices, like a beaten bell. No movement ever raised the lifeless dust, As, blown beneath the night’s enormous pall, We call to you with goatish prance and paces: Our lips are red as nights of festival And hell has dyed its fires upon our faces. These barren bodies may no children breed To quench the sun with their corrupted breath Save these our hearts, our breasts, our bodies feed— The fruit of love like ours, the worms of death. Within our brain the darkness slowly fell: Our eyes’ dark vacuum reflects no days— No voice, no sight, no thought within our hell— But only flesh our loneliness allays.

MONOTONOUSLY fell the rain, Like thoughts within an empty brain; The lolling weeds that fattened there Absorbed the broken lifeless air. “Do those dim eyes still hold a flame That leaps to Heaven at my name?” “Mine eyes would hold God’s face in sight; But your lips burned away the light.” “Within your brain the blood runs high?” “You came like thought; you licked it dry.” “Oh, we have burnt our souls with lust Till they are whiter than the dust ... Now are they white as purity?” “You blind mine eyes ... I cannot see.” “I am so tired—I fain would creep To hide within your heart and weep.” “My heart is dust ... no tears to shed.” “But carrion lives—it lives”—I said.