And now
the best of all
is to be alone, to possess one’s soul in silence.
Nakedly to be alone, unseen
is better than anything else in the world,
a relief like death.
Always
at the core of me
burns the small flame of anger, gnawing
from trespassed contacts, from red-hot finger bruises,
on my inward flesh, from hot, digging-in fingers of love.
Always
in the eyes of those who loved me
I have seen at last the image of him they loved
and took for me
mistook for me.
And always
it was a simulacrum, something
like me, and like a gibe at me.
So now I want, above all things
to preserve my nakedness
from the gibe of image-making love.
He said to me: You don’t trust me!
I said: Oh yes I do!
I know you won’t pick my pocket,
I know you’ll be very kind to me.
But it was not enough, he looked at me almost with hate.
And I failed entirely to see what he meant—
Since there was no circumstance requiring trust between us.
Don’t you care for my love? she said bitterly.
I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all requests to head-quarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct!
So I handed her the mirror.
And she would have broken it over my head,
but she caught sight of her own reflection
and that held her spellbound for two seconds
while I fled.
People who complain of loneliness must have lost something,
lost some living connection with the cosmos, out of themselves,
lost their life-flow
like a plant whose roots are cut.
And they are crying like plants whose roots are cut.
But the presence of other people will not give them new, rooted connection
it will only make them forget.
The thing to do is in solitude slowly and painfully put forth new roots
into the unknown, and take root by oneself.
She fanned herself with a violet fan
and looked sulky, under her thick straight brows.
The wisp of modern black mantilla
made her half Madonna, half Astarte.
Suddenly her yellow-brown eyes looked with a flare into mine.
—We could sin together!—
The spark fell and kindled instantly on my blood,
then died out almost as swiftly.
She can keep her sin
She can sin
with some thick-set Spaniard.
Sin doesn’t interest me.
Ah in the thunder air how still the trees are!
And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent
hardly looses even a last breath of perfume.
And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as if, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!
And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see:
and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue
blueness of things from the sea,
and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
how still they are together, they stand so still
in the thunder air, all strangers to one another
as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the silent garden.
Lichtental
Now it is almost night, from the bronzey soft sky
jugfull after jugfull of pure white liquid fire, bright white
tipples over and spills down, and is gone
and gold-bronze flutters bent through the thick upper air.
And as the electric liquid pours out, sometimes
a still brighter white snake wriggles among it, spilled
and tumbling wriggling down the sky:
and then the heavens cackle with uncouth sounds.
And the rain won’t come, the rain refuses to come!
This is the electricity that man is supposed to have mastered
chained, subjugated to his use!
supposed to!
‘Dost tha hear my horse’s feet, as he canters away?
Property! Property! Property! that’s what they seem to say!’
Do you hear my Rolls Royce purr, as it glides away?
—I lick the cream off property! that’s what it seems to say!
The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on
and the horse looks at him in silence.
They are so silent, they are in another world.