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[A small water-pool at the base of a hill. The pool is in the foreground, and its waters stretch out of view to left and right. Behind them is the hill, steeply sloping backward. Above the almost flat-topped hill a thin bar of bright blue sky is visible. The pool is calm, and colored a deep brownish-blue. Near its centre it bears the bluish-white reflection of an irregular oval cloud floating in the sky. It is late afternoon and softly bright dwindling light drapes the scene. Ten seconds after the curtain-rise, the Cloud drops waveringly down from the sky and alights to the extreme left of a narrow, slightly-curved stretch of ground in front of the pool. His image draws near him, to the edge of the pool; he looks down upon it for several seconds.]
Cloud. Image of me, child born of color on water, | |
| Trailing over the water’s breast | |
| Like the sigh of a lover paling the breast of his love: | |
| Sigh making the water white, | |
| Sigh that I drop from the sky, | 5 |
| Image of me, let us speak. | |
| The sighs of a lover hold meanings he does not know. | |
Cloud-image [A voice from the pool].
Do not call me your sighing; I am more than that. | |
| I am an image of you | |
| Straining, within the moments of life | 10 |
| I hold, to catch the shadowed soul | |
| Whose first whisper slips into death. | |
| I am a stranger to myself | |
| Wakening to moments of pallid longing. | |
Cloud [After a pause].
Sky is the reflection of some vast far-off smile | 15 |
| Making a blue breast warmer. | |
| Sky has a lover who flings her jewels, | |
| Fierce with the love he cannot bring. | |
| She strings the jewels over her body— | |
| Chained lover throwing one vast smile and trinkets | 20 |
| That mock the love whipping him…. | |
| I love her too, but I cannot look upward, | |
| So I am happier. | |
| Her breath comes down, in winds, | |
| And thrusts me along while I shake | 25 |
Beneath biting hints of her that are like pale whips.
[A pause.] | |
| Image of me, I have wondered | |
| Whether you longed for life | |
| To open the closed cries in your shadowed heart, | |
| As much as I and the unseen lover | 30 |
| Long for sky. I wondered, and so came down | |
| To give you a voice. | |
| Cloud-image. Ashen regrets within me | |
| Dwindle to even lighter ashes: | |
| Ashes that are like dying breath | 35 |
| After it passes through fire. | |
| In my moments of life, I fancied myself | |
| A wraith-like prince standing erect a moment | |
| Between high columns of silence that fell upon him | |
| One by one, ever rising to fall again. | 40 |
| But now I know I am only light and color | |
| Spotting the dark breasts of this pool | |
| With stinted love that cannot form itself | |
| Into a moment of actual touch. | |
| I have not even a soul. | 45 |
| Cloud. Image of me, the milky, dishevelled shadow | |
| Of my own soul drops on you. | |
| Shadows are often mirrors. | |
| I see within you parts of myself | |
| That were too tenuous to be even haze: | 50 |
| Parts that I never knew. | |
| Cloud-image. Why do you spin a rustling fairy-tale? | |
| Tender scarves cannot make me proud. | |
| Cloud. You are the milky, dishevelled shadow of my soul. | |
Cloud-image [After a pause].
I believe you, perhaps because I long to believe: | 55 |
| Or because your words are riotously afraid. | |
Cloud [After another pause].
You have an undertone of red— | |
| Red like the color left by maiden-lips | |
| Upon the cheeks of some memory: | |
| Maiden lips that shrunk to dust | 60 |
| And were blown away, leaving red that cannot be seen | |
| By far-away eyes. | |
| There is no red upon me …. who gave you this red? | |
| Cloud-image. I do not know; I have often felt it. | |
| It seemed a word of love | 65 |
| Writhing under rancid wraiths that bound it. | |
| I thought it the answer of this pool, | |
| Whose love for me was chained because | |
| I passed so quickly. | |
| Cloud. Wisps of caresses only make love bitter and tall, | 70 |
| Or slay it …. Red …. can you speak to me? | |
Voice of the Pool [Deeper than the Cloud-image’s voice and rising from the rear edge of the pool. The Cloud starts back as he hears it].
I am this pool: this red is mine. | |
| Two soldiers splashed into me, long ago. | |
| Red sprang from them in nervous trickles | |
| Like hunted passions never dying, | 75 |
| Yet always seeming to take their last step. | |
| And on the soldiers’ faces, red and black | |
| Were transfigured while wrestling to reach wild eyes. | |
| The soldiers sank within my edge | |
| And knowing they would die | 80 |
| Dragged themselves further in, preferring a quicker death. | |
| The red of them made me feel | |
| Like a mother forever holding a child | |
| That perished within her, spreading over her body. | |
| Their bones are deep in my heart: I cannot feel them. | 85 |
| Their bodies have faded out to uneasy memories, | |
| So thin that they can sleep between | |
Folds of the red I bear.
[A short interval of silence. A Woman slowly walks out upon the narrow stretch of ground in front of the pool. She stops two paces away from the Cloud, raises an arm, as though in weary supplication, but checks herself, and slowly turns to the pool, intently gazing upon it.] | |
| Woman. Cloud-image, are you a child, | |
| With moments of awakening sprinkled over endless sleep? | 90 |
| And do you carry small treasures into your sleep, | |
| To gladden the sparkling shoulders of dreams? | |
| I will fling myself into this pool | |
| And so become wedded to you, and lose | |
| The sharp silence flooding my moments of sleep: | 95 |
| The sharp silence keeping its edge | |
Because an even sharper grief swings it into me.
[A pause.] | |
| My husband was a soldier: he is dead. | |
| Perhaps he lies at the bottom of this pool | |
| That sways him as a tired stranger | 100 |
| Lifts up a body he has found on the road: | |
| A body that brings him no grief. | |
| Perhaps I shall swerve against him and taste his breast | |
| Without fear, before I slip into you, Cloud-image. | |
| Cloud-image. Why do you seek to join me? | 105 |
| The life that humans know | |
| Is a parade of cloud-images | |
| Mantled with faintest red. | |
| Humans are deep pools crossed by cloud-figures | |
| Who mistake the red cast of the pool | 110 |
| For love words too low to be heard….. | |
| And the clouds creeping over the pools are too high to be seen. | |
Woman [In a louder voice, after a pause. She has seated herself, with a quick feathery movement, beside the pool].
If I could only be an actual cloud! | |
| I would bend like a gracious priest rustling his gown of pale prayers, | |
| And shaking his mist-ringlets, as he marries | 115 |
| His images with drifting gestures of death. | |
If I could only be a real cloud!
[The Cloud, who has been standing still and watching her, suddenly rushes forward and flings himself upon her, hiding her from view. For several seconds he holds her thus. Then he rises, lifting her in his arms.] | |
Cloud [With soft triumph].
I have often looked down upon this parade | |
| Of weary cloud-images crossing the depths of humans | |
| Who scarcely felt them; looked and longed | 120 |
| To swoop down, closing upon a woman or child | |
And gently spreading her over me.
[A pause.] | |
| Am I happier now?…. It does not matter: | |
| Happiness is the melting-clawed ghost of human-beings, | |
But clouds do not need it.
[He rises from the ground, as the curtain falls.] | 125 |
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