Precipitations Part 9

Pierrette is dead!

Between her narrow little b.r.e.a.s.t.s They have laid a cross of lead.

Her tight pale lips are sunken.

Her fleshless fingers clutch the pall.

Why did she have to die like that, And she so small?

THE DEATH OF COLUMBINE

White breast beaten in sea waves, Hair tangled in foam, Lonely sky, Desolate horizon, Pale and s.h.i.+ning clouds: All this desolate and s.h.i.+ning sea is no place for you, My dead Columbine.

And the waves will bite your breast; And the wind, that does not know death from life, Will leap upon you and leer into your eyes And suck at your dead lips.

Oh, my little Columbine, You go farther and farther away from me, Out where there are no s.h.i.+ps And the solemn clouds Soar across the somber horizon.

PIERROT LAUGHS

You are old, Pierrot, But I do not laugh As in harlequinade You totter down the path.

Now you are old, Pierrot, And drool to your guitar, I do not cast you off.

Though your love songs are as feeble as a winter fly's I do not scoff.

Exultant I cast back on you What you gave me, And bind you with the unasked love That has kept me from being free!

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF CALIBAN

Once I had a little brother, An ugly little brother that was I.

I was still in the nursery When they nailed him to a clean white cross, And said he was dead.

He flapped there all day, Thin and stiff as a jumping jack.

But when I had gone to bed, And the lights were out, And the muslin curtains rustled in white secrecy, And through the thin brown gla.s.s like onion skin I could see the bright moon sag to the tree tops With a heaviness I dimly understood, While the haggard branches gauntly strained, As useless to the moon as she to them, I was rocked in an orange and umber cradle, A rosy bubble light with fires.h.i.+ne Floating atop the cold, And my little brother was burning merrily, His twisted figure A writhing grotesque.

Yet his face never moved And never burnt up.

And when I had drifted asleep I still saw it Like a reflection trapped in a mirror.

And I couldn't brush it out!

I couldn't brush it out!

GUNDRY

There are little blood flecks on the snow.

There is blood in the heart of the white hyacinth.

I saw her pale body harsh as a flash of lightning Between the gray torsos of the trees.

She had a little child.

She held a little child in her breast.

She went quickly through the dim forest.

I have seen her feet.

They are as white as ivory.

Where she ran there are little red tracks.

And it is not yet springtime!

VIENNESE WALTZ

Dresden china shepherdesses Whirl in the silver suns.h.i.+ne: Columbine stars Float in gauze petticoats of light....

Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old, Smelling of jasmine and camphor: Prim arms folded over immaculate b.r.e.a.s.t.s....

The pirouetting tune dies....

Stars and little faded faces, Waltzing, waltzing, Shoot slowly downward On tinkling music, Dusty little flowers Sinking into oblivion.

After the music, Quiet, The glacial period renewed, Monsters on earth, A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights--

These too vanis.h.i.+ng-- Silence unending.

RESURRECTION

IMMORTALITY

Death is a child of stone.

Death is a little white stone goat.

The little goat child dances motionless.

Little kid feet make a circle around the world: Bas-relief of Death, Little stone goats capering across the clouds.

Perhaps Death is nearest in the spring.

Then Her flower clouds the woods with white blossoms, Apple blossoms, quince blossoms, Pear snow.

These are the flowers that drift in the hair of the dead.

The sun s.h.i.+nes on stone eyelids That melt with light.

This smile is a pale happiness; It glows motionless On the rocky hillside and the long stems of trees.

There are no shadows in this happy light: The glow beat by little goat hoofs Chiseled across the clouds in motionless delight, While suns fade behind crumbling hillsides And hungry illusions vanish In generation after generation.

AUTUMN NIGHT

The moon is as complacent as a frog.

She sits in the sky like a blind white stone, And does not even see Love As she caresses his face with her contemptuous light.

She reaches her long white s.h.i.+vering fingers Into the bowels of men.

Her tender superfluous probing into all that pollutes Is like the immodesty of the mad.

She is a mad woman holding up her dress So that her white belly s.h.i.+nes.

Haughty, Impregnable, Ridiculous, Silent and white as a debauched queen, Her ecstasy is that of a cold and sensual child.

She is Death enjoying Life, Innocently, Lasciviously.

VENUS' FLY TRAP

A wax bubble moon trembles on the honey-blue horizon.

Softly heated by your breast Pearl wax languorously unfolds her lily lips of mist, Swells about you, Weaves you into herself through each moist pore, Absorbs you deliciously, Destroys you.

SUICIDE

A dirty little beetle Peers into motionless eyes Transfixed to their depths As by s.h.i.+ning needles.

Limbs are taut in ultimate resentment.

A bare sky confronts an upturned face.

Like a wheel vanis.h.i.+ng in speed The corpse, containing everything, Has swallowed itself.

LEAVES