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 sunshine: 
Columbine stars
Float in gauze petticoats of light.... 
Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old,
Smelling of jasmine and camphor: 
Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts....

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 vanishing—­
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 shines 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 shivering 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 shines. 
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.