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I MUSIC I heard with you was more than music, | |
| And bread I broke with you was more than bread. | |
| Now that I am without you, all is desolate, | |
| All that was once so beautiful is dead. | |
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| Your hands once touched this table and this silver, | 5 |
| And I have seen your fingers hold this glass. | |
| These things do not remember you, beloved: | |
| And yet your touch upon them will not pass. | |
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| For it was in my heart you moved among them, | |
| And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes. | 10 |
| And in my heart they will remember always: | |
| They knew you once, O beautiful and wise! | |
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II My heart has become as hard as a city street: | |
| The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron; | |
| All day long and all night long they beat— | 15 |
| They ring like the hoofs of time. | |
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| My heart has become as drab as a city park: | |
| The grass is worn with the feet of shameless lovers, | |
| A match is struck, there is kissing in the dark, | |
| The moon comes, pale with sleep. | 20 |
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| My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices, | |
| They shout from the slums, from the streets, from the crowded places; | |
| And tunes from a hurdy-gurdy that coldly rejoices | |
| Shoot arrows into my heart … | |
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| O my belovèd, sleeping so far from me, | 25 |
| Walking alone in sunlight, or in blue moonlight, | |
| Are you alive there, far across that sea?— | |
| Or were you only a dream? | |
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III Vermilioned mouth, tired with many kisses, | |
| Eyes, that have lighted for so many eyes, | 30 |
| Are you not wearied yet with countless lovers, | |
| Desirous now to take even me for prize? | |
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| Draw not my glance, nor set my sick heart beating, | |
| Body so stripped, for all your silks and lace! | |
| Do not reach out pale hands to me, seductive, | 35 |
| Nor slant sly eyes, O subtly smiling face! | |
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| For I am drawn to you, like wind I follow, | |
| Like a warm amorous wind; though I desire | |
| Even in dream to keep one face before me— | |
| One face like fire, and holier than fire. . . . . . . . . | 40 |
| I walk beneath these trees, and in this darkness | |
| Muse beyond seas of her from whom I came, | |
| While you, with cat-like step, steal close beside me, | |
| Spreading your perfume round me like soft flame. | |
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| Ah! should I once stoop face and forehead to you, | 45 |
| Into and through your sweetness, a night like this, | |
| In the lime-blossomed darkness feel your bosom, | |
| Warm and so soft, and find your lips to kiss, | |
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| And tear at your strange flesh with crazy fingers, | |
| And drink with mouth gone mad your eyes’ wild wine, | 50 |
| And cleave to you, body with breathless body, | |
| Till bestial were exalted to divine— | |
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| Would I again, O lamia silked and scented, | |
| Out of the slumberous magic of your eyes, | |
| And your narcotic perfume, soft and febrile, | 55 |
| Have the romantic hardihood to rise, | |
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| And set my heart across great seas of distance | |
| With love unsullied for her from whom I came?… | |
| With cat-like step you steal beside me, past me, | |
| Leaving your perfume round me like soft flame. | 60 |
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IV Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket, | |
| Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands. | |
| Around her neck they have put a golden necklace, | |
| Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands. | |
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| Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt— | 65 |
| Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the south. | |
| Now she is very old and dry and faded, | |
| With black bitumen they have sealed up her mouth. | |
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| Grave-robbers pulled the gold rings from her fingers, | |
| Despite the holy symbols across her breast; | 70 |
| They scared the bats that quietly whirled above her. | |
| Poor lady! she would have been long since at rest | |
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| If she had not been wrapped and spiced so shrewdly, | |
| Preserved, obscene, to mock black flights of years. | |
| What would her lover have said, had he foreseen it? | 75 |
| Had he been moved to ecstasy, or tears? | |
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| O sweet clean earth from whom the green blade cometh!— | |
| When we are dead, my best-beloved and I, | |
| Close well above us that we may rest forever, | |
| Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky. | 80 |
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V In the noisy street, | |
| Where the sifted sunlight yellows the pallid faces, | |
| Sudden I close my eyes, and on my eyelids | |
| Feel from the far-off sea a cool faint spray, | |
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| A breath on my cheek, | 85 |
| From the tumbling breakers and foam, the hard sand shattered; | |
| Gulls in the high wind whistling, flashing waters, | |
| Smoke from the flashing waters blown on rocks. | |
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| And I know once more, | |
| O dearly belovèd, that all these seas are between us— | 90 |
| Tumult and madness, desolate save for the sea-gulls; | |
| You on the farther shore, and I in this street. | |
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