e night
Carry me down the empty street
Made hideous with arcs of purple light...
Inevitably I must return to bed.
The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks.
I am their prisoner. I have no more chance
Of escape, when all is said,
Than a dying beetle in a box--
And life, and love,--and death--have gone to France.

The Dream House

I steal across the sodden floor
And dead leaves blow about,
Where once we planned an iron door
To shut the whole world out;

I find the hearth, its fires unlit,
Its ashes cold--Tonight
Only the stars give warmth to it,
Only the moon gives light.

And yonder on our spacious bed
Fashioned for love and sleep
The Autumn goldenrod lies dead,
The maple-leaves lie deep.

III. Studies and Designs

A Japanese Vase
(A Design to be Wrought in Metals)

Five harsh, black birds in shining bronze come crying
Into a silver sky,
Piercing and jubilant is the shape of their flying,
Their beaks are pointed with delight,
Curved sharply with desire,
The passionate direction of their flight,
Clear and high,
Stretches their bodies taut like humming wire.
The cold wind blows into angry patterns the jet-bright
Feathers of their wings,
Their claws curl loosely, safely, about nothingness,
They clasp no things.
Direction and desire they possess
By which in sharp, unswerving flight they hold
Across an iron sea to the golden beach
Whereon lies carrion, their feast. A shore of gold
That birds wrought on a vase can never reach.

The Bow Moon
(A print by Hiroshige)

From the dawn, Take San,
Ungathered star,
Follow me back through night
Till I recapture
Evening.

(The bending hours of darkness
Sway apart like lilies
Before the backward-blowing wind.)

At last,
Bearing in her mysterious bosom
Unravished beauty,
Dark Yesterday rises to view against her silent sky
Irrevocable... secret...
Confronting the fantastic dream
Of an impossible Tomorrow.

And that frail bridge,
Delicate, immutable,
Which rises higher than the moon,
More everlasting than the fading sky,
Joining What-was-not with What-might-have-been,
That bridge were named "Today"
If I had loved you, Take San,
If you had loved me.

An Italian Chest
(Lorenzo Designs a Bas-Relief)

Lust is the oldest lion of them all
And he shall have first place,
Wi