"ecstasies" poems
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
10.8k
consider O
woman this
my body.
for it has
lain
with empty arms
upon the giddy hills
to dream of you,
approve these
firm unsated
eyes
which have beheld
night’s speechless carnival
the painting
of the dark
with meteors
streaming from playful
immortal hands
the bursting
of the wafted stars
(in time to come you shall
remember of this night amazing
ecstasies slowly,
in the glutted
heart fleet
flowerterrible
memories
shall
rise,slowly
return upon the
red elected lips
scaleless visions)
10k
ACROSS the flat and the pastel snow
Two people go . . . . 'And do you remember
When last we wandered this shore?' . . . 'Ah no!
For it is cold-hearted December.'
'Dead, the leaves that like asses's ears hung on the trees
When last we wandered and squandered joy here;
Now Midas your husband will listen for these
Whispers--these tears for joy's bier.'
And as they walk, they seem tall pagodas;
And all the ropes let down from the cloud
Ring the hard cold bell-buds upon the trees--codas
Of overtones, ecstasies, grown for love's shroud
6k
You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why
Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented--
My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry.
You are aware that once I sought the Grail,
Riding in armour bright, serene and strong;
And it was told that through my infant wail
There rose immortal semblances of song.
But now I've said good-bye to Galahad,
And am no more the knight of dreams and show:
For lust and senseless hatred make me glad,
And my killed friends are with me where I go.
Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs;
And there is absolution in my song
5.6k
Puissant piquant and predatory
And observant from afar
He looks down on your slumber
Like a door that's left ajar
Plying with his manly vice
A reckless male visage
A rogue of masculine device
Seeks entrance to your mind
He saunters with a swagger
A macho savvy moxie
To personify virility's incarnate
His dream zone's metier
He sifts your ****** entourage
In search of sprawls recumbence
To tantalize climactic fervor
With lambent photic scenes
Grasping at your revelries
He spies the wanton lust
With swanky strut appealing
Your primal urge to sate
He leaves undone resistance
With innate resilience seized
The lavish wayward implications
Of unrequited livid deeds
Like passion's lurid lecheries
An insatiable torrid sooth
You wrestle with his adamance
Your carnal ecstasies revealed
You pounce on his exsertion
You splay your agile form
wriggling like a supple nymph
You accept his blatant storm
You writhe in your abandon
In a euphoric supplication
His machismo ****** enveloping
Your wildest latent needs
With no regrets or reticence
you awaken from this dream
To find yourself alone again
Like it had never been
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC
Love arrives
and in its train
come ecstasies and memories
of pleasure
and ancient histories of pain
and if we are bold
the love strikes away
the chains of fear that
our souls hold.
Only time
is capable of understanding
how valuable
love really is because
life is the flower and love
is its honey.
I have wandered
through this world
as each moment
of my life has unfurled
and now I stand here
with my heart in hand
trying to give it to
this beautiful lady
that I met knowing
that this is something
I will not regret.
Where have you been
my love because
I have been waiting
so long for you
and suddenly
you came to me
so softly like
a beautiful song
that had known
me before.
I feel that this
can't be wrong
and know that since
we have connected
our love will only grow
stronger and last
so much longer.
I could feel you
before you got here
and I knew that to me
you would be so dear
and the more that
I look into your face
the more things finally
become clear
because I look
into those eyes and
see no lies.
Our journey together
is about to begin
and it is a journey
I have longed for
and the one that starts
from within.
I can see your light
and I feel your heart
and sense your healing light
that flows from
within your soul.
I have waited so long
and knew that
you were close
and together we will do
the most that we can
as the years go by
and neither of us has any
reason to cry.
You came to me one day
and took me much
by surprise and I didn't
know quite what to say
except, "what took you so long,"
and you responded
by saying that
"my love is strong
and I am here to stay
and life will not
get in our way." Jon York 2012
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 2:08 PM UTC
Heee! Heee! Hooooooo…..
Well, Hello, lovebirds…making love are we?
One on top of the other
still with flesh and organs all intact
and making all sorts of crude noises
and getting into this messy business –
getting your bed sticky and wet with sweat;
ah, you beings of flesh and blood and ecstasies
unlike me
just bones and a mere ghost me now living
lonely and in airless worlds
sent there by you my wife under that man
and you the man who helped poison me -
now you are over my wife
and you raise your **** to the gods
Hheeee…heeee….heeee… Heee! Heee! Hooooooo…..
Well, Hello, lovebirds…making love are we?
I’ll be back every time the two of you fornicators
make love in my bed – shame on you, you murderer;
you took my wife, my home –and can’t even afford
to buy a new bed;
and you even use the condoms I left in the wardrobe...
Heee! Heee! Hooooooo…..
but I’ll be back every time the two of you close each other
like two palms raised in prayer ;
and I’ll pull the mosquito net down a bit and peer in
to see the two of you naked in bed
and I’ve got a bony tongue
long enough to lick the both of you!-
and to see me with my horrendous eyeballs
your phallus will shrink immediately;
and that woman, my former wife and eternal betrayer,
who mixed poison into my rice and shrimps
- every time she sees me, in her shock and fear
she’ll **** you out of bed, every time for sure...
Heee! Heee! Hooooo….
Well, Hello, lovebirds…making love are we?
Heee! Heee! Hooooooo…..
Feb 23, 2011
Feb 23, 2011 at 1:11 AM UTC
musical walls of throbbing
meaning
makeshift footsteps
escaping tendons
lashing tongues
notes of splendour
****** in my trombone-chills
whats the wizardry
in those piano fingers
belting blues
rainbow ecstasies
oozing ****** gyrations
three minute *******
splitting night into slivers
for tomorrows takings
lets dance
jam together
touch each others souls
with promise.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 5:39 PM UTC
1651
A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Each one of us has tasted
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength—
A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die
Cohesive as the Spirit
It may expire if He—
“Made Flesh and dwelt among us”
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved Philology.
3.9k
After I have suffered at your whim
I need this quiet time
to think of what you did to me
to fulfill every need I have
to love you in that way.
I lie and think again of hands
that strayed around me feather soft
A touch so light and barely felt
yet it was as though hot iron had made
to brand those curves new-made
by rope that cuts in places deep.
I felt your kisses find my deepest heart
and made it pound with wanting you
with lips that moved across my skin
driving me to ecstasies I never knew
until you brought me to this secret place
to find our time of such delight.
Such is the theatre of our love,
where we entwine with one another so.
I need again your bonds around me tight
that force me to submit to you
in ways I know I must
be some other than myself
or perish from the loss of you.
Sep 11, 2016
Sep 11, 2016 at 4:13 PM UTC
All hail the Lizard King,
whose esoteric words crawl like sirens
over hungry rocks
baring teeth to the hypnotized sailor
steering his ship into the jagged maw.
All hail the Lizard King,
perched upon his Dionysian throne,
ambrosial ecstasies fill his cup
while jongleurs dance to psychedelic chansons.
At his feet
prey the nubile maidens of yore
flower-eyed and pearly-teethed.
His eyes, mighty azure pools of madness
within which Byzantine kings were murdered--
blood darts through the mysterious waters
into the hysterical white void.
Alexander the Great
sits poised like a statue
where his libido crouches like a panther
'til the aural adonis
leaps from his confines
an amorous figure of tantalizing flesh and blood
with supple lips pouting, naked muscles taut,
mad eyes gleaming.
All hail the Lizard King,
from lush lips poetic decrees
sing forth into the endless night
penetrating taverns and bedrooms and radios
and stadiums.
The electric shaman leaps from his throne
to cast his wicked incantation,
a spark from his eyes shoots to the pyre
where a lustful blue flame erupts from
the bones of the prophets.
HIs voice soothing, haunting,
the sonic alchemist
sings his siren song into the cataclysm
where we are cast in abeyance--
We follow him,
but is he only leading us deeper
into the darkness,
or does he truly see the light?
The endless night.
All hail the Lizard King.
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 10:06 PM UTC
Jupiter Mars P Moon
VENEZIA, "May" 19"th", 1910.
Jupiter's foursquare blaze of gold and blue
Rides on the moon, a lilac conch of pearl,
As if the dread god, charioted anew
Came conquering, his amazing disk awhirl
To war down all the stars. I see him through
The hair of this mine own Italian girl,
Adela
That bends her face on mine in the gondola!
There is scarce a breath of wind on the lagoon.
Life is absorbed in its beatitude,
A meditative mage beneath the moon
Ah! should we come, a delicate interlude,
To Campo Santo that, this night of June,
Heals for awhile the immitigable feud?
Adela!
Your breath ruffles my soul in the gondola!
Through maze on maze of silent waterways,
Guarded by lightless sentinel palaces,
We glide; the soft plash of the oar, that sways
Our life, like love does, laps --- no softer seas
Swoon in the ***** of Pacific bays!
We are in tune with the infinite ecstasies,
Adela!
Sway with me, sway with me in the gondola!
They hold us in, these tangled sepulchres
That guard such ghostly life. They tower above
Our passage like the cliffs of death. There stirs
No angel from the pinnacles thereof.
All broods, all breeds. But immanent as Hers
That reigns is this most silent crown of love
Adela
That broods on me, and is I, in the gondola.
They twist, they twine, these white and black canals,
Now stark with lamplight, now a reach of Styx.
Even as out love - raging wild animals
Suddenly hoisted on the crucifix
To radiate seraphic coronals,
Flowers, flowers - O let our light and darkness mix,
Adela,
Goddess and beast with me in the gondola!
Come! though your hair be a cascade of fire,
Your lips twin snakes, your tongue the lightning flash,
Your teeth God's grip on life, your face His lyre,
Your eyes His stars - come, let our Venus lash
Our bodies with the whips of Her desire.
Your bed's the world, your body the world-ash,
Adela!
Shall I give the word to the man of the gondola?
3.4k
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy Stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamoured Moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven),
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty—
Where Love’s a grow-up God—
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit—
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute—
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
3.3k
she brings me pancakes and lights me a cigarette
my ***** are cement and icicles form on my toes
she opens the curtain to a dying dove on the balcony
the banks are closed and the stock market has crashed
the periscope lens, so lucidly balanced, has fallen
irreparably into the crypt of a dream
i take a bite of an apple and stare into the mid-morning sun
after bagging the bird, she drapes herself across my chest
she is worshiped like a cradle, or a gravestone in a thunder storm
in her ecstasies, a prism, a poem fits like a glove
as the sunlight warms her ******* she heaves remnants
of last night's whiskey into my adam's apple and it burns me
the words she struck me with still sting in my ears
her fingerprints remain on my back and my bathroom mirror
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 8:51 PM UTC
When besieged by the
sweeping tides of time
The evanescent of your presence
Has been preserved
In the fortitude
Of my mind
And begins to bloom in
The moment of ecstasies
I have savoured
The sweetness
Of you
That the tongue
Whispers
Unto unknown realms
That I may
****** destiny
To surrender
Her will
To the
Dawning
Of new
Beginnings
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 7:22 AM UTC
Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
No faint and hesitating trill,
Such tribute as to winter chill
The lonely redbreast pays!
Clear, loud, and lively is the din,
From social warblers gathering in
Their harvest of sweet lays.
Nor doth the example fail to cheer
Me, conscious that my leaf is sere,
And yellow on the bough:—
Fall, rosy garlands, from my head!
Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed
Around a younger brow!
Yet will I temperately rejoice;
Wide is the range, and free the choice
Of undiscordant themes;
Which, haply, kindred souls may prize
Not less than vernal ecstasies,
And passion’s feverish dreams.
For deathless powers to verse belong,
And they like Demi-gods are strong
On whom the Muses smile;
But some their function have disclaimed,
Best pleased with what is aptliest framed
To enervate and defile.
Not such the initiatory strains
Committed to the silent plains
In Britain’s earliest dawn:
Trembled the groves, the stars grew pale,
While all-too-daringly the veil
Of nature was withdrawn!
Nor such the spirit-stirring note
When the live chords Alcæus smote,
Inflamed by sense of wrong;
Woe! woe to Tyrants! from the lyre
Broke threateningly, in sparkles dire
Of fierce vindictive song.
And not unhallowed was the page
By wingèd Love inscribed, to assuage
The pangs of vain pursuit;
Love listening while the Lesbian Maid
With finest touch of passion swayed
Her own æolian lute.
O ye, who patiently explore
The wreck of Herculanean lore,
What rapture! could ye seize
Some Theban fragment, or unroll
One precious, tender-hearted scroll
Of pure Simonides.
That were, indeed, a genuine birth
Of poesy; a bursting forth
Of genius from the dust:
What Horace gloried to behold,
What Maro loved, shall we enfold?
Can haughty Time be just!
2.5k
i have held with
fascination, when i was young,
all of my toys.
a parallel universe of
marvels. imperial is the mood
of these ecstasies!
i remember my cheap svelte revolver
back in 1998 bought from
the festive bazaar in the marketplace at the dreary heart of Bocaue when i was
consumed by the thought of brutal force and how swiftly, in the hands of men meant for twisting open
the doors, welcome death
or the metallurgy of it.
i used to run off into the sunset
toting my gun high with pride
shunning the Sun, and the
reprise of my carousals is my mother
soldering in her white hands
a "walis tambo" and summoning me
homeward with a churlish grin
on my face, triumphantly ecstatic
over my rendezvous.
now my gun has withstood the
tatterdemalion of dog days
and in one corner i felt its
brokenness as it yearns to
be retired early in the peak
of my youth. happiness wears down like a chip on the old linoleumed floor and i tinker with
it to unsheathe the grime
of the unspoken stucco concrete.
i placed it in a box, my black revolver, together with the toys
that i once laughed with
when only bliss is as simple as a juvenile love, or the easy picking
of a santan over the fields
where i ran off into
the viridian laughing with the verdure of the world that i once knew as something so beautiful
and intricate.
i heard my black revolver went
somewhere behind the macadamized wall where i dreamt of having a basketball ring nailed to.
only i knew how to play
my revolver, and now that i am
caught within the heaviness
of all things that mean greater
than all other joys,
no other days could ever
surpass how
i made
a hero in myself
mighty with the tales
that i keep.
good ole black revolver, 1998.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 8:53 AM UTC
I came to a town on the road to you,
and by chance the day was Eid al Fitr.
The was much music and dancing and rejoicing in life's fullness;
I too was swept away in the simple ecstasies.
But the old Mullahs had heard of my travels
and bid come unto them to discuss heavy matters.
"How can one break the Law and remain beloved of Allah?"
"Because God created the Law out of Love,
thus the Love of Allah is above and beyond it's precepts.
God will Love whom He chooses."
Outrage. Insult. Blasphemy.
The music outside drew my soul away, and I joined
the common people, my brothers and sisters,
while the old men argued without us.
Wordlessly, we danced.
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 3:03 PM UTC
each moment perceives new ecstasies through me,
as vision locks on every shifting road
still leading home, most fervently.
percolated dreams reveal
the seeds that have been well concealed.
as each moment waves so delicately
mimicking a cloth in the breeze,
in the breath of an exhale
a future is foreseen
within me.
ॐ
boiling from me is
the steam of my awareness,
as the torch within now flares.
flowing gently into the air I breathe,
consciousness solidifies chemically;
vibrant harmony extends,
as minds eye stares.
at this place inside me
where I will dwell eternally,
embracing all I've made.
despite a razor thin gaze,
all roads lead home.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 1:45 PM UTC
I am dream, made flesh!
Cut
from your design
Burning,
Inflamed,
Caressed by your
Love.....
Purrrrrring softly...
Naked heart-print's press upon the tissue
Of trembling thunder;
I bend
Beneath his breath
While he permeates
A rake of glittered stars
Across my skin;
The barrier
Between his tongue and my scent...
Scarlet
He holds me ... liquid,
Framed to his eyes,
Teased
******* hard;
The melt of ice, fed on
The heat of his tongue;
Shedding night's skin
In shades of twilight...
Dark, eyes gaze through mine
Caressing
Silken pleasures;
The moistness of a stolen kiss,
Willing, wet,
Tasting the tender;
Of palpitating curves,
Of Soft thighs, quivering
Moving
Slow enough to
Swallow...
A tigress, unleashed, beneath
Her tamer's trance
I vary my pose,
The audacity of my savage
Innocence
Meets his gaze,
River-wild and dark,
The moment.... opaque
Darkened silk;
The slide,
Palms down,
My skin alive at the burn
As hips gyrate
On the rub
Burning where shadows curve,
Creating the fire of
Hunger...
A writhe of craze
A pause to breathe
To shut hard
The breath of me
As he inhales
Slim ecstasies, skin
Seizures
Immersed in milky secrets
Weak, with love.....
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 3:15 PM UTC
He gave swerves to uncategorized happiness, with spins that ******* back into his despondencies. He was never given a chance to applaud himself for being a second-long happy or get back to the spotlight where he did belong to his whole **** life. He's properly beautiful when he dances, or when he's proud of his weakest points. Him singing, even the most heard songs will sound re-engaging as if he owns it. Our eyes pace head-on against our cars' contraries. Every scar I had given to my wrists soothe when we wrap our sinful hands in an ill-starred manner.
Love, for him, is altruistically pouring around like sudden downpours on a midsummer day; he had everything to offer yet nothing for himself. He invests a lot with what he wins back. He's the grandeur of a boring ensemble of actors yet still believes he's the subpar star when in reality, no such star existed like it. No one would ever dare to leave him with a river to bleed, or cherry wine bottles with teary send-offs.
Anyone who does that will rest assured have a slot in his own obscenities - oh, how I wish hell would be a lot better than that.
I wasn't briefed for safe keeping such recherchés, that I had to jilt. A handful will be curious, why my decision is a ****** or rather, why am I a **** up. But I would say people with better anything deserve his still-endearing dissonances. And all I have are lyrics while he gives song compositions. All he ever needs are happy mornings who hugs him back so right. Behind their curtains are joy-tinted windows with episodes of cuddles and husky 'Good morning's'. I am not that person, so I had left him in his most heightened situation yet - loving me. In a bed full of my inconsistencies, he was sleeping beside his hard-to-swallow Ecstasies.
Jun 8, 2018
Jun 8, 2018 at 11:18 PM UTC
As we very reluctantly parted, he queried whether he was just another of my whims. Ignorantly, I replied I guessed so, provided we never saw each other again. Erm. Months later the fire is still burning brightly in the absence of any good reason. Interesting eh? Needing a topic as usual, and weary of nature tributes (hahaha, can you believe it?!) I tackled this beloved thread, writing it in the present tense as if from our first days then altering to the present in the second (linked) sonnet.
(sonnet #'s CCCCXLVIII, CCCCXLIX)
You play my heartstrings like a puppeteer
Methinks. Quite deftly pluck and gently twang
To immelod'ous strains whilst I half hang
'Twixt hope and fear, life's balance near
Precar'ous in that cur'ous dance. By mere
Sweet words or grim I'm tossed, a boomerang
That can't be lost to you though ev'ry pang
Estranges reason in this game too dear.
All yours because those unseen chords have caught
My heart that like a harp you seem to use,
As sans my will, in strumming half distraught
Or with such ecstasies, howe'er you choose
You ply, in your winds varied whims 'non fraught,
This hapless leaf. To what end? Just t'amuse?
# II
To what end? Just t'amuse, we tried romance?
Who fell in love? I did. Did you? In vain?
Oh, why'd we play that game? What now remains?
Behold: a live coal, frosted black, whose stance
Seems quite the opposite; wherein the dance
Of Love's hot passion plays anon, aye reigns
Sans you, and any reason. Its refrain
Nigh hopeless, sings your name where none supplants.
Because you knew it would. You told me so.
And while I scoffed, that's how it goes, I see.
Who ******* that hopeful thread, oh sweetness Beau?
'Twas "love at first sight," a rare golden key.
That never quite died but e'er seems to glow.
At least that's how it 'pears in Love's debris.
08Jan12
D67a,b
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 6:00 PM UTC
Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring’s unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year’s friends together.
One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.
While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:
A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.
Amid yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.
My dazzled sight he oft deceives,
A brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;
As if by that exulting strain
He mocked and treated with disdain
The voiceless Form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes.
1.6k
you are the very same delight
of the fading dreams sobering perfume.
like the cover of cloud against unyielding starlight,
you are. the very same delight
known when, asleep beneath a cypress,
heavens whispers did gossip about a beloved sagacious tigress
and I eavesdropped too her scent and knew
you were the very same. delight
be your gift this year and all to be.
like ecstasies of joyous reverie, to me
you are the very same delight.
Apr 19, 2021
Apr 19, 2021 at 1:12 PM UTC
Death himself in the rain . . . death himself . . .
Death in the savage sunlight . . . skeletal death . . .
I hear the clack of his feet,
Clearly on stones, softly in dust;
He hurries among the trees
Whirling the leaves, tossing he hands from waves.
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat.
Death himself in the grass, death himself,
Gyrating invisibly in the sun,
Scatters the grass-blades, whips the wind,
Tears at boughs with malignant laughter:
On the long echoing air I hear him run.
Death himself in the dusk, gathering lilacs,
Breaking a white-fleshed bough,
Strewing purple on a cobwebbed lawn,
Dancing, dancing,
The long red sun-rays glancing
On flailing arms, skipping with hideous knees
Cavorting grotesque ecstasies:
I do not see him, but I see the lilacs fall,
I hear the scrape of knuckles against the wall,
The leaves are tossed and tremble where he plunges among them,
And I hear the sound of his breath,
Sharp and whistling, the rythm of death.
It is evening: the lights on a long street balance and sway.
In the purple ether they swing and silently sing,
The street is a gossamer swung in space,
And death himself in the wind comes dancing along it,
And the lights, like raindrops, tremble and swing.
Hurry, spider, and spread your glistening web,
For death approaches!
Hurry, rose, and open your heart to the bee,
For death approaches!
Maiden, let down your hair for the hands of your lover,
Comb it with moonlight and wreathe it with leaves,
For death approaches!
Death, huge in the star; small in the sand-grain;
Death himself in the rain,
Drawing the rain about him like a garment of jewels:
I hear the sound of his feet
On the stairs of the wind, in the sun,
In the forests of the sea . . .
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat!
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