Written by
Sylvia Plath |
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it_____
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand in foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
(1962)
|
Written by
Sylvia Plath |
Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The bastard's a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens.
Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him.
He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.
Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan.
You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.
B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through?
Gee baby, you are rare.
'
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley.
The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.
O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband.
He went on.
Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of.
You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that.
That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag.
'Every woman's a whore.
I can't communicate.
'
I see your cute décor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.
Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.
|
Written by
Sylvia Plath |
I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was
Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints.
I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold.
I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer.
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior!
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist.
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her:
She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages.
Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain,
And it was I who attracted everybody's attention,
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed.
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up --
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality.
I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it.
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience:
She humored my weakness like the best of nurses,
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.
In time our relationship grew more intense.
She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish.
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself,
As if my habits offended her in some way.
She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded.
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces
Simply because she looked after me so badly.
Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal.
She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful --
Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse!
And secretly she began to hope I'd die.
Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case
Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water.
I wasn't in any position to get rid of her.
She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp --
I had forgotten how to walk or sit,
So I was careful not to upset her in any way
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself.
Living with her was like living with my own coffin:
Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully.
I used to think we might make a go of it together --
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.
Now I see it must be one or the other of us.
She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit.
I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her,
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.
|
Written by
David Lehman |
I like walking on streets as black and wet as this one
now, at two in the solemnly musical morning, when everyone else
in this town emptied of Lestrygonians and Lotus-eaters
is asleep or trying or worrying why
they aren't asleep, while unknown to them Ulysses walks
into the shabby apartment I live in, humming and feeling
happy with the avant-garde weather we're having,
the winds (a fugue for flute and oboe) pouring
into the windows which I left open although
I live on the ground floor and there have been
two burglaries on my block already this week,
do I quickly take a look to see
if the valuables are missing? No, that is I can't,
it's an epistemological quandary: what I consider
valuable, would they? Who are they, anyway? I'd answer that
with speculations based on newspaper accounts if I were
Donald E.
Westlake, whose novels I'm hooked on, but
this first cigarette after twenty-four hours
of abstinence tastes so good it makes me want
to include it in my catalogue of pleasures
designed to hide the ugliness or sweep it away
the way the violent overflow of rain over cliffs
cleans the sewers and drains of Ithaca
whose waterfalls head my list, followed by
crudites of carrots and beets, roots and all,
with rained-on radishes, too beautiful to eat,
and the pure pleasure of talking, talking and not knowing
where the talk will lead, but willing to take my chances.
Furthermore I shall enumerate some varieties of tulips
(Bacchus, Tantalus, Dardanelles) and other flowers
with names that have a life of their own (Love Lies Bleeding,
Dwarf Blue Bedding, Burning Bush, Torch Lily, Narcissus).
Mostly, as I've implied, it's the names of things
that count; still, sometimes I wonder and, wondering, find
the path of least resistance, the earth's orbit
around the sun's delirious clarity.
Once you sniff
the aphrodisiac of disaster, you know: there's no reason
for the anxiety--or for expecting to be free of it;
try telling Franz Kafka he has no reason to feel guilty;
or so I say to well-meaning mongers of common sense.
They way I figure, you start with the names
which are keys and then you throw them away
and learn to love the locked rooms, with or without
corpses inside, riddles to unravel, emptiness to possess,
a woman to wake up with a kiss (who is she?
no one knows) who begs your forgiveness (for what?
you cannot know) and then, in the authoritative tone
of one who has weathered the storm of his exile, orders you
to put up your hands and beg the rain to continue
as if it were in your power.
And it is,
I feel it with each drop.
I am standing
outside at the window, looking in on myself
writing these words, feeling what wretches feel, just
as the doctor ordered.
And that's what I plan to do,
what the storm I was caught in reminded me to do,
to shake the superflux, distribute my appetite, fast
without so much as a glass of water, and love
each bite I haven't taken.
I shall become the romantic poet
whose coat of many colors smeared
with blood, like a butcher's apron, left
in the sacred pit or brought back to my father
to confirm my death, confirms my new life
instead, an alien prince of dungeons and dreams
who sheds the disguise people recognize him by
to reveal himself to his true brothers at last
in the silence that stuns before joy descends, like rain.
|
Written by
Louise Gluck |
How can you say
earth should give me joy? Each thing
born is my burden; I cannot succeed
with all of you.
And you would like to dictate to me,
you would like to tell me
who among you is most valuable,
who most resembles me.
And you hold up as an example
the pure life, the detachment
you struggle to acheive--
How can you understand me
when you cannot understand yourselves?
Your memory is not
powerful enough, it will not
reach back far enough--
Never forget you are my children.
You are not suffering because you touched each other
but because you were born,
because you required life
separate from me.
|
Written by
Ogden Nash |
Once upon a time there was an Italian,
And some people thought he was a rapscallion,
But he wasn't offended,
Because other people thought he was splendid,
And he said the world was round,
And everybody made an uncomplimentary sound,
But he went and tried to borrow some money from Ferdinand
But Ferdinand said America was a bird in the bush and he'd rather have a berdinand,
But Columbus' brain was fertile, it wasn't arid,
And he remembered that Ferdinand was married,
And he thought, there is no wife like a misunderstood one,
Because if her husband thinks something is a terrible idea she is bound to think it a good one,
So he perfumed his handkerchief with bay rum and citronella,
And he went to see Isabella,
And he looked wonderful but he had never felt sillier,
And she said, I can't place the face but the aroma is familiar,
And Columbus didn't say a word,
All he said was, I am Columbus, the fifteenth-century Admiral Byrd,
And, just as he thought, her disposition was very malleable,
And she said, Here are my jewels, and she wasn't penurious like Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi, she wasn't referring to her children, no, she was referring to her jewels, which were very very valuable,
So Columbus said, Somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it,
And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it,
And the fetters gave him welts,
And they named America after somebody else,
So the sad fate of Columbus ought to be pointed out to every child and every voter,
Because it has a very important moral, which is, Don't be a discoverer, be a promoter.
|
Written by
Katherine Mansfield |
Now this is the story of Olaf
Who ages and ages ago
Lived right on the top of a mountain,
A mountain all covered with snow.
And he was quite pretty and tiny
With beautiful curling fair hair
And small hands like delicate flowers--
Cheeks kissed by the cold mountain air.
He lived in a hut made of pinewood
Just one little room and a door
A table, a chair, and a bedstead
And animal skins on the floor.
Now Olaf was partly fairy
And so never wanted to eat;
He thought dewdrops and raindrops were plenty
And snowflakes and all perfumes sweet.
In the daytime when sweeping and dusting
And cleaning were quite at an end,
He would sit very still on the doorstep
And dream--O, that he had a friend!
Somebody to come when he called them,
Somebody to catch by the hand,
Somebody to sleep with at night time,
Somebody who'd quite understand.
One night in the middle of Winter
He lay wide awake on his bed,
Outside there was fury of tempest
And calling of wolves to be fed--
Thin wolves, grey and silent as shadows;
And Olaf was frightened to death.
He had peeped through a crack in the doorpost,
He had seen the white smoke of their breath.
But suddenly over the storm wind
He heard a small voice pleadingly
Cry, "I am a snow fairy, Olaf,
Unfasten the window for me.
"
So he did, and there flew through the opening
The daintiest, prettiest sprite
Her face and her dress and her stockings,
Her hands and her curls were all white.
And she said, "O you poor little stranger
Before I am melted, you know,
I have brought you a valuable present,
A little brown fiddle and bow.
So now you can never be lonely,
With a fiddle, you see, for a friend,
But all through the Summer and Winter
Play beautiful songs without end.
"
And then,--O she melted like water,
But Olaf was happy at last;
The fiddle he tucked in his shoulder,
He held his small bow very fast.
So perhaps on the quietest of evenings
If you listen, you may hear him soon,
The child who is playing the fiddle
Away up in the cold, lonely moon.
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary;
The hill-top is nigh—but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;)
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years;
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done;
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.
Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means;
On the plain below, recruits are drilling and exercising;
There is the camp—one regiment departs to-morrow;
Do you hear the officers giving the orders?
Do you hear the clank of the muskets?
Why, what comes over you now, old man?
Why do you tremble, and clutch my hand so convulsively?
The troops are but drilling—they are yet surrounded with smiles;
Around them, at hand, the well-drest friends, and the women;
While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down;
Green the midsummer verdure, and fresh blows the dallying breeze,
O’er proud and peaceful cities, and arm of the sea between.
But drill and parade are over—they march back to quarters;
Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping!
As wending, the crowds now part and disperse—but we, old man,
Not for nothing have I brought you hither—we must remain;
You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell.
THE CENTENARIAN.
When I clutch’d your hand, it was not with terror;
But suddenly, pouring about me here, on every side,
And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran,
And where tents are pitch’d, and wherever you see, south and south-east and
south-west,
Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods,
And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over), came again, and suddenly raged,
As eighty-five years agone, no mere parade receiv’d with applause of friends,
But a battle, which I took part in myself—aye, long ago as it is, I took part in it,
Walking then this hill-top, this same ground.
Aye, this is the ground;
My blind eyes, even as I speak, behold it re-peopled from graves;
The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear;
Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted;
I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay;
I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes:
Here we lay encamp’d—it was this time in summer also.
As I talk, I remember all—I remember the Declaration;
It was read here—the whole army paraded—it was read to us here;
By his staff surrounded, the General stood in the middle—he held up his
unsheath’d
sword,
It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army.
’Twas a bold act then;
The English war-ships had just arrived—the king had sent them from over the sea;
We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,
And the transports, swarming with soldiers.
A few days more, and they landed—and then the battle.
Twenty thousand were brought against us,
A veteran force, furnish’d with good artillery.
I tell not now the whole of the battle;
But one brigade, early in the forenoon, order’d forward to engage the red-coats;
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d,
And how long and how well it stood, confronting death.
Who do you think that was, marching steadily, sternly confronting death?
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and many of them known personally to the General.
Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters;
Till of a sudden, unlook’d for, by defiles through the woods, gain’d at night,
The British advancing, wedging in from the east, fiercely playing their guns,
That brigade of the youngest was cut off, and at the enemy’s mercy.
The General watch’d them from this hill;
They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment;
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle;
But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them!
It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General;
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish.
Meanwhile the British maneuver’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle;
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle.
We fought the fight in detachments;
Sallying forth, we fought at several points—but in each the luck was against us;
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back to the works on
this
hill;
Till we turn’d, menacing, here, and then he left us.
That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong;
Few return’d—nearly all remain in Brooklyn.
That, and here, my General’s first battle;
No women looking on, nor sunshine to bask in—it did not conclude with applause;
Nobody clapp’d hands here then.
But in darkness, in mist, on the ground, under a chill rain,
Wearied that night we lay, foil’d and sullen;
While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord, off against us encamp’d,
Quite within hearing, feasting, klinking wine-glasses together over their victory.
So, dull and damp, and another day;
But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing,
Silent as a ghost, while they thought they were sure of him, my General retreated.
I saw him at the river-side,
Down by the ferry, lit by torches, hastening the embarcation;
My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass’d over;
And then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for the last time.
Every one else seem’d fill’d with gloom;
Many no doubt thought of capitulation.
But when my General pass’d me,
As he stood in his boat, and look’d toward the coming sun,
I saw something different from capitulation.
TERMINUS.
Enough—the Centenarian’s story ends;
The two, the past and present, have interchanged;
I myself, as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.
And is this the ground Washington trod?
And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he cross’d,
As resolute in defeat, as other generals in their proudest triumphs?
It is well—a lesson like that, always comes good;
I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward;
I must preserve that look, as it beam’d on you, rivers of Brooklyn.
See! as the annual round returns, the phantoms return;
It is the 27th of August, and the British have landed;
The battle begins, and goes against us—behold! through the smoke, Washington’s
face;
The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march’d forth to intercept the enemy;
They are cut off—murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them;
Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag,
Baptized that day in many a young man’s bloody wounds,
In death, defeat, and sisters’, mothers’ tears.
Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more valuable than your owners
supposed;
Ah, river! henceforth you will be illumin’d to me at sunrise with something besides
the
sun.
Encampments new! in the midst of you stands an encampment very old;
Stands forever the camp of the dead brigade.
|
Written by
Erica Jong |
You gave me the child
that seamed my belly
& stitched up my life.
You gave me: one book of love poems,
five years of peace
& two of pain.
You gave me darkness, light, laughter
& the certain knowledge
that we someday die.
You gave me seven years
during which the cells of my body
died & were reborn.
Now we have died
into the limbo of lost loves,
that wreckage of memories
tarnishing with time,
that litany of losses
which grows longer with the years,
as more of our friends
descend underground
& the list of our loved dead
outstrips the list of the living.
Knowing as we do
our certain doom,
knowing as we do
the rarity of the gifts we gave
& received,
can we redeem
our love from the limbo,
dust it off like a fine sea trunk
found in an attic
& now more valuable
for its age & rarity
than a shining new one?
Probably not.
This page is spattered
with tears that streak the words
lose, losses, limbo.
I stand on a ledge in hell
still howling for our love
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
I
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies
white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle.
Puffs of darkness
sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair.
The
air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue,
and beside it stand
two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.
See! She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair.
She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill,
between the geranium stalks.
He laughs, and crumples
his paper
as he leans forward to look.
"The Basket Filled with
Moonlight",
what a title for a book!
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops.
He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums.
He
is beating
his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse.
She
sits
on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap.
And tap! She
cracks a nut.
And tap! Another.
Tap! Tap! Tap! The
shells ricochet upon the roof,
and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear.
"It is very *****," thinks Peter, "the basket was
empty, I'm sure.
How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?"
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple,
and the roof glitters
like ice.
II
Five o'clock.
The geraniums are very
gay in their crimson array.
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs
goes Peter
to pay his morning's work with a holiday.
"Annette, it is I.
Have you finished? Can
I come?"
Peter jumps through the window.
"Dear, are you alone?"
"Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done.
This
gold thread
is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have
seen me bankrupt.
Sit down, now tell me, is your story
going well?"
The golden dome glittered in the orange of the
setting sun.
On the walls,
at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles,
and coffin palls.
All stiff with rich embroidery, and
stitched with
so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds
new-opened on their stems.
Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky.
"No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread
of such a red.
My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison.
Heigh-ho! See
my little
pecking dove? I'm in love with my own temple.
Only
that halo's wrong.
The colour's too strong, or not strong enough.
I don't
know.
My eyes
are tired.
Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable.
I
won't do
any more.
I promise.
You tyrannise, Dear,
that's enough.
Now sit down
and amuse me while I rest.
"
The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor,
and begin to climb
the opposite wall.
Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting,
and undulant in the orange glow.
His senses flow towards
her,
where she lies supine and dreaming.
Seeming drowned in
a golden halo.
The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear.
He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid
hands.
His lips are hot and speechless.
He woos her, quivering,
and the room
is filled with shadows, for the sun has set.
But she
only understands
the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one
colour
on another.
She does not see that this is the same, and
querulously murmurs
his name.
"Peter, I don't want it.
I am tired.
"
And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed.
There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky.
III
"Go home, now, Peter.
To-night is full
moon.
I must be alone.
"
"How soon the moon is full again! Annette,
let me stay.
Indeed, Dear Love,
I shall not go away.
My God, but you keep me starved! You
write
`No Entrance Here', over all the doors.
Is it not strange,
my Dear,
that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere.
Would
marriage
strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied
the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the
whole of me,
you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat.
Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you
know it.
I cannot
feed my life on being a poet.
Let me stay.
"
"As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me
if you do.
It will
crush your heart and squeeze the love out.
"
He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about.
"
"Only remember one thing from to-night.
My
work is taxing and I must
have sight! I MUST!"
The clear moon looks in between the geraniums.
On
the wall,
the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman
by a silver thread.
They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking,
for there
are no lids.
Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises
are cased
in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon.
The
basket
is heaped with human eyes.
She cracks off the whites
and throws them away.
They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce
over the edge and disappear.
But she is here, quietly
sitting
on the window-sill, eating human eyes.
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple,
and the roof shines
like ice.
IV
How hot the sheets are! His skin is
tormented with pricks,
and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye.
It lights
the sky with blood,
and drips blood.
And the drops sizzle on his bare skin,
and he smells them
burning in, and branding his body with the name "Annette".
The blood-red sky is outside his window now.
Is
it blood or fire?
Merciful God! Fire! And his heart wrenches
and pounds "Annette!"
The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets,
gets to the edge,
bounces over and disappears.
The bellying clouds are red as they swing over
the housetops.
V
The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is
liquid with moonlight.
How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two
black holes swallow
the brilliance of the moon.
Deflowered windows, sockets
without sight.
A man stands before the house.
He sees
the silver-blue moonlight,
and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium
red.
Annette!
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