As saints before a cross?
You who have tossed all flowers away,
Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood
Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,—
Do you then crave your own blood's offering,
Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?
In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,
Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,
You lean across the precipice of time
Calling and crying
For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter—
You who have tossed all flowers away,
Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood
Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,—
Do you then crave your own blood's offering,
Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?
In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,
Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,
You lean across the precipice of time
Calling and crying
For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter—
IV
Waiting,
Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven
Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos—
Waiting,
Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,
Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,
Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,
Waiting like a vast arch of quietness
Through which a screaming messenger shall dart—
Like a dense hood of silence
Pierced by a sword of music—
Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool
Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges. . . .
Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven
Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos—
Waiting,
Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,
Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,
Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,
Waiting like a vast arch of quietness
Through which a screaming messenger shall dart—
Like a dense hood of silence
Pierced by a sword of music—
Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool
Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges. . . .
1919
49
