I AM strangling emotions | |
| And casting them into the seats | |
| Of an empty theatre. | |
| When my lifeless audience is complete, | |
| The ghosts of former emotions | 5 |
| Will entertain their dead masters. | |
| After each short act | |
| A humorous ghost will fly through the audience, | |
| Striking the limp hands into applause, | |
| And between the acts | 10 |
| Sepulchral indifference will mingle | |
| With the dust upon the backs of seats. | |
| Upon the stage a melodrama | |
| And a travesty will romp | |
| Against a back-drop of fugitive resignation. | 15 |
| Climax and anti-climax | |
| Will jilt each other and drift | |
| Into a cheated insincerity. | |
| Sometimes the lights will retire | |
| While a shriek and laugh | 20 |
| Make a martyr of the darkness. | |
| When the lights reappear | |
| An actor-ghost will assure the audience | |
| That nothing has happened save | |
| The efforts of a fellow ghost | 25 |
| To capture life again. | |
| In his role of usher | |
| Another ghost will arrange | |
| The lifeless limbs of the audience | |
| Into postures of relief. | 30 |
| Sometimes a comedy will trip | |
| The feet of an assassin, | |
| Declaring that if ghosts were forced | |
| To undergo a second death | |
| Their thinness might become unbearable. | 35 |
| At other times indignant tragedy | |
| Will banish an intruding farce, | |
| Claiming that life should not retain | |
| The luxury of another laugh. | |
| The first act of the play will show | 40 |
| The owner of the theatre | |
| Conversing with the ghost of a woman. | |
| As unresponsive as stone | |
| Solidly repelling a spectral world, | |
| His words will keenly betray | 45 |
| The bloodless control of his features. | |
| He will say: “With slightly lowered shoulders, | |
| Because of a knife sticking in my back, | |
| I shall trifle with crowded highways, | |
| Buying decorations | 50 |
| For an interrupted bridal-party. | |
| This process will be unimportant | |
| To the workshop of my mind | |
| Where love and death are only | |
| Colorless problems upon a chart.” | 55 |
| The ghost of the woman will say: | |
| “Your mind is but the rebellious servant | |
| Of sensitive emotions | |
| And brings them clearer dominance.” | |
| And what shall I mournfully answer? | 60 |
| I am strangling emotions | |
| And casting them into the seats | |
| Of an empty theatre. | |
| |
