This dead hotel burned where the crossroads split.
It hides behind nettles, looks blankly out
over the wreck of a valley and wit-
nesses as days crawl and shamble about.
Greed failed this place. The village shrank away.
Afraid it might become not quite a town.
Here the dark rows grumble, "You don't complain.".
Then risk whispers at night, hiding their frowns.
The river's clean, except some times it floods
pouring over a vein of hematite
or washing rust that seems more dirt than blood
leaving the winding gear drowned in a pit.
Perhaps the fate of all muscle and stone
crumbles when tyranny, and hope, are gone.
Meanwhile the woman, from her strawberry lips,
(Like a snake on redhot coals, writhing her hips
And working her breasts against the stays of her busk)
Let flow these words, with a heavy scent of musk:
"My mouth is wet; and I know deep in my bed
How to bury old conscience till he's dead.
On these proud breasts I wipe all tears away
And old men laugh like children at their play.
For the man who sees me naked, I replace
The moon, the sun, and all the stars of space!
And I am so expert in voluptuous charms
That when I hush a man in my terrible arms
Yielding my bosom to his biting lust,
(Shy but provocative, frail and yet robust)
The mattress swoons in commotion under me,
And the helpless angels would be damned for me!
When she had sucked the marrow from every bone,
I turned to her as languid as a stone
To give her one last kiss ... and saw her thus:
A slimy rotten wineskin, full of pus!
I shut my eyes, transfixed in a chill of fright,
And when I opened them to the living light . . .
Beside me there, the powerful robot
That fed its fill out of my blood . . . was not!
Instead, the cold ruins of a skeleton
Shivered, creaking like a weather vane
Or like a sign hung out on an iron arm
Swinging through long winter nights in the storm.
Like an angel, feral eyed,
Piercing to your sleeping side,
Gliding down with oily flight
In the inwards of the night,
I shall give you, my dark one,
Kisses frozen as the moon,
Caresses such as snakes give
Slithering round the open grave.
When the livid daylights waken
You will find my place forsaken,
Icy till the evening's here:
As others might with tenderness
Rule your life and your youngness
I shall rule you with a fear.
You forests, like cathedrals, are my dread:
You roar like organs. Our curst hearts, like cells
Where death forever rattles on the bed,
Echo your de Profudis as it sweels.
My spirit hates you, Ocean ! sees, and loathes
Its tumults in your own. Of men defeated
The bitter laugh, that's full of sobs and oaths,
Is in your own tremendously repeated.
How you would please me, Night ! without your stars
Which speak a foreign dialect, that jars
On one who seeks the void, the black, the bare.
Yet even your darkest shade a canvas forms
Whereon my eye must multiply in swarms
Familiar looks of shapes no longer there.
Thou who abruptly as a knife
Didst come into my heart; thou who,
A demon horde into my life,
Didst enter, wildly dancing, through
The doorways of my sense unlatched
To make my spirit thy domain-
Harlot to whom I am attached
As convicts to the ball and chain,
As gamblers to the wheel's bright spell,
As drunkards to their raging thirst,
As corpses to their worms - accurst
Be thou! Oh, be thou damned to hell!
I have entreated the swift sword
To strike, that I at once be freed;
The poisoned phial I have implored
To plot with me a ruthless deed.
Alas! the phial and the blade
Do cry aloud and laugh at me:
"Thou art not worthy of our aid;
Thou art not worthy to be free.
Though one of us should be the tool
To save thee from thy wretched fate,
Thy kisses would resuscitate
The body of thy vampire, fool!"