Стихотворения

Накрой меня своею темнотой, о, сжалься,
враг мой милый!
Невыносимым хладом лба коснись,
Вытягивай живые жилы
Из сердца! Ниже, ниже наклонись,
Грозя и муча, мстя и сострадая
За все, чем стал, чем был!

Вот снова!
Из шелеста ночного, ветрового, из тьмы, что впереди,
Зовет чуть слышно вкрадчивое слово,
Терзая слух и мозг: приди, приди!
Я здесь. Я — твой, блаженный мой мучитель!
Прими, утешь, спаси! О, пощади!

Париж, 1924

Стихи на случай

THE HOLY OFFICE

Myself unto myself will give
This name Katharsis-Purgative.
I, who disheveled ways forsook
To hold the poets' grammar-book,
Bringing to tavern and to brothel
The mind of witty Aristotle,
Lest bards in the attempt should err
Must here be my interpreter:
Wherefore receive now from my lip
Peripatetic scholarship.
To enter heaven, travel hell,
Be piteous or terrible
One positively needs the ease,
Of plenary indulgences.
For every true-born mysticist
A Dante is, unprejudiced,
Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,
Hazards extremes of heterodoxy,
Like him who finds a joy at table
Pondering the uncomfortable.
Ruling one's life by common sense
How can one fail to be intense?
But I must not accounted be
One of that mumming company
With him who hies him to appease

His giddy dames' frivolities
While they console him when he whinges
With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes —
Or him who sober all the day
Mixes a naggin in his play —
Or him who conduct 'seems to own',
His preference for a man of 'tone' —
Or him who plays the rugged patch
To millionaires in Hazelhatch
But weeping after holy fast
Confesses all his pagan past —
Or him who will his hat unfix
Neither to malt nor crucifix
But show to all that poor-dressed be
His high Castilian courtesy —
Or him who loves his Master dear —
Or him who drinks his pint in fear —
Or him who once when snug abed
Saw Jesus Christ without his head
And tried so hard to win for us
The long-lost works of Eschylus.
But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem,
Those things for which Grandmother Church
Left me severely in the lurch.
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.