LAGNIAPPE

You in the quiet garden,
You with the death sweet smile,
Before you speak of love to me
Go out and hate awhile.

The kind devil
Has a tolerant grin. 
He flings the golden gates out wide
And lets poor people in. 
He warms them in his bosom
And guards their pain. 
He shows them hell fields that are bright
And skies gentle with rain.

But up in paradise
The stern Lord is wise,
And Michael with his flaming sword
Puts out the angels’ eyes.

Hail Mary!

Pierrette is dead! 
Between her narrow little breasts
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 shining clouds: 
All this desolate and shining 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 ships
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 glass 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 fireshine
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!