But when Art, imbecile,
Sits old and chill
On sidings shaven clean,
And counts his clustering
Dead daisies on a string
With witless laughter....

Then like a new Jill
Toiling up a hill
Life scrambles after.

BROOKLYN BRIDGE

Pythoness body—­arching
Over the night like an ecstasy—­
I feel your coils tightening... 
And the world’s lessening breath.

DREAMS

Men die... 
Dreams only change their houses. 
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of... 
However deep the pit and heaped the clay—­
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world—­
Dreams will to light.

THE FIRE

The old men of the world have made a fire
To warm their trembling hands. 
They poke the young men in. 
The young men burn like withes.

If one run a little way,
The old men are wrath. 
They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames. 
Green withes burn slow... 
And the smoke of the young men’s torment
Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak,
And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky....

Green withes burn slow... 
And the old men of the world sit round the fire
And rub their hands.... 
But the smoke of the young men’s torment
Ascends up for ever and ever.

A MEMORY

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town... 
The shining town... 
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night.

The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself... 
As we...

Inadequate night... 
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea... 
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.

THE EDGE

I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me... 
But there was time... 
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,
     staring into the abyss... 
I do not know how long... 
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins—­shaking my hands away... 
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein... 
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.

As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them... 
There must have been a spent moon,
For the Tall One’s veil held a shimmer of silver...