Silverpoints | Page 2

over the chosen ground,?Like a young horse, she drags the heavy trawl,?Tireless; or speeds her rapturous course unbound,?And passing fishers through the darkness call
Deep greeting, in the jargon of the sea.?Haul upon haul, flounders and soles and dabs,?And phosphorescent animalcule,?Sand, seadrift, weeds, thousands of worthless crabs.
Low on the mud the darkling fishes grope.?Cautious to stir, staring with jewel eyes;?Dogs of the sea, the savage congers mope,?Winding their sulky march Meander-wise.
Suddenly all is light and life and flight,?Upon the sandy bottom, agate strewn.?The fishers mumble, waiting till the night?Urge on the clouds, and cover up the moon.
THE BARBER
I
I dreamed I was a barber; and there went?Beneath my hand, oh! manes extravagant.?Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask?Of many a pleasant girl. It was my task?To gild their hair, carefully, strand by strand;?To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand;?To draw a bodkin, from a vase of kohl,?Through the closed lashes; pencils from a bowl?Of sepia to paint them underneath;?To blow upon their eyes with a soft breath.?They lay them back and watched the leaping bands.
II
The dream grew vague. I moulded with my hands?The mobile breasts, the valley; and the waist?I touched; and pigments reverently placed?Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains,?Beryls and crysolites and diaphanes,?And gems whose hot harsh names are never said.?I was a masseur; and my fingers bled?With wonder as I touched their awful limbs.
III
Suddenly, in the marble trough, there seems?O, last of my pale, mistresses, Sweetness!?A twylipped scarlet pansie. My caress?Tinges thy steelgray eyes to violet.?Adown thy body skips the pit-a-pat?Of treatment once heard in a hospital?For plagues that fascinate, but half appal.
IV
So, at the sound, the blood of me stood cold.?Thy chaste hair ripened into sullen gold.?The throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth.?The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth.?And on the belly pallid blushes crept,?That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.
MISHKA
TO HENRI TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
Mishka is poet among the beasts.?When roots are rotten, and rivers weep.?The bear is at play in the land of sleep.?Though his head be heavy between his fists.?The bear is poet among the beasts.
THE DREAM:
Wide and large are the monster's eyes,?Nought saying, save one word alone:?Mishka! Mishka, as turned to stone,?Hears no word else, nor in anywise?Can see aught save the monster's eyes.
Honey is under the monster's lips;?And Mishka follows into her lair,?dragged in the net of her yellow hair,?Knowing all things when honey drips?On his tongue like rain, the song of the hips
Of the honey-child, and of each twin mound.?Mishka! there screamed a far bird-note,?Deep in the sky, when round his throat?The triple coil of her hair she wound.?And stroked his limbs with a humming sound.
Mishka is white like a hunter's son?Tor he knows no more of the ancient south?When the honey-child's lips are on his mouth,?When all her kisses are joined in one,?And his body is bathed in grass and sun.
The shadows lie mauven beneath the trees,?And purple stains, where the finches pass,?Leap in the stalks of the deep, rank grass.?Flutter of-wing, and the buzz of bees,?Deepen the silence, and sweeten ease.
The honey-child is an olive tree,?The voice of birds and the voice of flowers,?Each of them all and all the hours,?The honey-child is a winged bee,?Her touch is a perfume, a melody.
SUMMER PAST
TO OSCAR WILDE
There was the summer. There
Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,?And dripping amber sweat.
O sweet to see?The great trees condescend to cast a pearl?Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
In ecstasy.
Fruit of a quest, despair.?Smart of a sullen wrong.?Where may they hide them yet?
One hour, yet one,?To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,?To see the naiads' floating hair, caressed
By fragrant sun.
Beams. Softly lulled the eves?The song-tired birds to sleep,?That other things might tell
Their secrecies.?The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves.?Deep in what hollow do the stern gods keep?Their bitter silence? By what listening well
Where holy trees,
Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
Of restless green?
THE VINES
TO ANDR�� CHEVRILLON
"Have you seen the listening snake?"?bramble clutches for his bride,?Lately she was by his side,?Woodbine, with her gummy hands.
In the ground the mottled snake?Listens for the dawn of day;?Listens, listening death away,?Till the day burst winter's bands.
Painted ivy is asleep,?Stretched upon the bank, all torn,?Sinewy though she be; love-lorn?Convolvuluses cease to creep.
Bramble clutches for his bride,?Woodbine, with her gummy hands,?All his horny claws expands;?She has withered in his grasp.
"Till the day dawn, till the tide?Of the winter's afternoon."?"Who tells dawning?"--"Listen, soon."?Half born tendrils, grasping, gasp.
Je pleure dans les coins; je n'ai plus go?t �� rien;?Oh! j'ai tant pleur��, Dimanche, en mon paroissien!
JULES LAFORGUE
Did we not, Darling, you and I,?Walk on the earth like other men??Did we not walk and wonder why?They spat upon us so. And then
We lay us down among fresh earthy?Sweet flowers breaking overhead,?Sore needed rest for our frail girth,?For our frail hearts; a well-sought bed.
So Spring came, and spread daffodils;?Summer, and fluffy bees