Page:Poet Lore, volume 34, 1923.djvu/322

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
306
SHE HAS A BODY
Even as a romantic poinard, pierce you slowly to the heart, where they draw blood and emotion. This wound is less dangerous and less cruel than that made by contented eyes, innocent eyes, unconscious eyes,
Eyes which exhale love, eyes which are like violets and breathe their perfume about them, eyes which lure souls, as flowers of the flax
Lure bees. Eyes plunder souls in plundering eyes, for it is out of them that souls look and lure eyes and entangle them in the honey of love.

XI

I would tell of eyes, I would sing of eyes all my life. I know all their colors, all their caprices, their destiny. It is written in their color, whose messages I do not ignore, for signs are repeated and the eyes are a sign.
In the past I have taken the horoscope of the eyes; the eyes have told me many secrets which no longer interest me, but I seek in vain the secret of the eyes I discovered one winter day. I seek it and I would not find it.
Neither under the eyelids, nor between their lashes, nor in the clear iris where is mirrored the world of forms, of colors and of desires, would I find it. I love better to seek it always,
Not as one seeks in the grass a ring fallen from the finger, but as one seeks a joy that life has fashioned slowly for one in the mystery of things.

XII

She has eyes then, a nose, ears, a mouth; her head is portrayed from brow to chin and from cheeks to nape and root of hair. It is a beautiful thing, a woman’s head, freely drawn in the esthetic circle,
And it traverses life with all its senses watching for their natural food, brow to the wind wet with rain, nostrils to the odor of buds, of lilacs and of hearts, ears to the murmurs of life and the whispers of desires,
Eyes to the beauty of things and of creatures, to colors and tints, to curved forms and those which are extended into arches and domes,