Vainly in hell for love, vainly for days gone by;
Where the incarnate flame of Lesbian lovers dying,
Then where the world is past, and Heaven or hell draw nigh? Heaven with cold and loveless lips, though his fruits be many,
Hell with his red mouth hot, barren although he be.
Hylas and Sappho choose, and are never denied of any,
Hell’s most insatiate fangs, death and his empery.
Heaven is bare and bleak, hell has the joys beyond Heaven,
Fire and desire and delight, of a love that is always young;
Hell has the pains of hell, but the sweetest of lusts for leaven.
Fierce body, breasts of delight, fearful and murderous tongue.
Hell is the house of all delight,
Heaven the home of a bitter blight;
Pain is our joy and our spirits’ power,
Never shall fade its fiery flower.
Now is the triumph of Love, gazing far to an infinite pleasure,
Pleasure that mocks Heaven’s hopes, that our hands are
impatient to hold.
Love and delight pouring out, in a fearless insatiate measure,
Out of the chalice of lust, scarlet o’errunning its gold.
This is the song of the Spring, that the nightingale’s carol by starlight,
This the delight of our eyes, as they shine with strange fire in the night,
This is our trust and our joy – beyond death we look on to the far light
Flaming from hell our last home, this is the key of our might.
Come, fiery birds of a clime we know not, and sing us your paean;
Triumph of gods that are known secretly, not by a name,
Gods whose implacable feet have trampled the god Galilean,
Cast though they be into hell, given to death and to shame.
Heaven and hell has striven in war,
Sappho and Hylas, with Christ and Jah;
We are of those, though they lose their power,
Never shall fade their fiery flower.
TO J. L. D.
At last, so long desired, so long delayed,
The step is taken, and the threshold past;
I am within the palace I have prayed
At last.
Like scudding winds, when skies are overcast,
Came the soft breath of Love, that might not fade.
O Love, whose magic whispers bind me fast,
O Love, who hast the kiss of Love betrayed,
Hide my poor blush beneath thy pinions vast,
Since thou hast come, nor left me more a maid.
At last.
TO A. D.
Across the sea that lies between us twain
I gaze and see thee, exiled but as free
As winds that lash the billows of the main
Across the sea.
I remain here in sombre slavery
Amid these winter gusts of bitter pain,
And sorrow for thy lips in vain, in vain,
Bound by the world’s inexorable chain,
And parted from thee. Spirit of Liberty,
Bear thou my kisses’ sunshine, my tears’ rain
To him I love, who may one day love me
And bid him gladden at my amorous strain
Across the sea.
AT KIEL
Oh, the white flame of limbs in dusky air,
The furnace of thy great grey eyes on me
Turned till I shudder. Darkness on the sea,
And wan ghost-lights are flickering everywhere
So that the world is ghastly. But within
Where we two cling together, and hot kisses
Stray to and fro amid the wildernesses
Of swart curled locks! I deem it a sweet sin,
So sweet that fires of hell have no more power
On body and soul to quench the lustrous flame
Of that desire that burns between us twain.
What is Eternity, seeing we hold this hour
For all the lusts and luxuries of shame?
Heaven is well lost for this surpassing gain.
THE BLOOD-LOTUS
The ashen sky, too sick for sleep, makes my face grey; my senses swoon;
Here, in the glamour of the moon, will not some pitying godhead weep
For cold grey anguish of her eyes, that look to God, and look in vain,
For death, the anodyne of pain, for sleep, earth’s trivial
paradise?
Sleep I forget. Her silky breath no longer fans my ears; I dream
I float on some forgotten stream that hath a saviour still of death,
A sweet warm smell of hidden flowers whose heavy petals kiss the sun,
Fierce tropic poisons every one that fume and sweat through forest hours;
They grow in darkness, heat beguiles their sluggish kisses, in the wood
They breathe no murmur that is good, and Satan in their blossom smiles.
They murder with the old perfume that maddens all men’s blood; we die
Fresh from some corpse-clothed memory, some secret
redolence of gloom,
Some darkling murmurous song of lust quite strange to man and beast and bird,
Silent in power, not overheard by any snake that eats the dust:
No crimson-hooded viper knows, no silver-crested asp has guessed
The strange soft secrets of my breast; no leprous cobra shall disclose
The many-seated, multiform, divine, essential joys that these
Dank odours bring, that starry seas wash white in vain; intense and warm
The scents fulfil, they permeate all lips, all arteries, and fire
New murmured music on the lyre that throbs the horrors they create.
Omniscient blossom! Is thy red slack bosom fresher for my kiss?
Are thy loves sharper? Hast thou bliss in all the sorrows of the dead?
Why art thou paler when the moon grows loftier in the troublous sky?
Why dost thou beat and heave when I press lips of fire, hell’s princeliest boon,
To thy mad petals, green and gold like angels’ wings, when as a flood
God’s essence fills them, and the blood throughout their web grows icy cold?
To thy red centre are my eyes held fast and fervent, as at night
Some sad miasma lends a light of strange and silent
blasphemies
To lure a soul to hell, to draw some saint’s charred lust, to tempt, to win
Another sacrifice to sin, another poet’s heart to gnaw
With dubious remorse. Oh! flame of torturing flower-love! sacrament
Of Satan, triple element of mystery and love and shame,
Green, gold, and crimson, in my heart you strive with Jesus for its realm,
While Sorrow’s tears would overwhelm the warriors of either part!
Jesus would lure me: from his side the gleaming torrent of the spear
Withdraws, my soul with joy and fear waits for sweet blood to pour its tide
Of warm delight – in vain! so cold, so watery, so slack it flows,
It leaves me moveless as a rose, albeit her flakes are manifold.
He hath no scent to drive men mad; no mystic fragrance from his skin
Sheds a loose hint of subtle sin such as the queen Faustina had.
Thou drawest me. Thy golden lips are carven Cleopatra-wise
Large, full, and moist, within them lies the silver rampart, whence there slips
That rosy flame of love, the fount of blood at my light bidding spilt;
And my desires, if aught thou wilt, are with thy mind, and thy account
With God shall bear my name the mo
re; give me the
knowledge, me the power
For some new sin one little hour, and bankrupt God the
creditor:
Steal from his stock of suffering; his tender mercies rob at will;
Destroy his graciousness, until he must avenge the name of king.
Strange fascinations whirl and wind about my spirit lying
coils;
Thy charm enticeth, for the spoils of victory, all an evil mind.
Thy perfume doth confound my thought, new longings echo, and I crave
Doubtful liaisons with the grave and loves of Parthia for sport,
I think perhaps no longer yet, but dream and lust for stranger things
Than ever sucked the lips of kings, or fed the tears of Mahomet.
Quaint carven vampire bats, unseen in curious hollows of the trees,
Or deadlier serpents coiled at ease round carcases of birds unclean.
All wandering changeful spectre shapes that dance in slow sweet measure round
And merge themselves in the profound, nude women and distorted apes
Grotesque and hairy, in their rage more rampant than the
stallion steed;
There is no help; their horrid need on these pale women they assuage.
Wan breasts too pendulous, thin hands waving so aimlessly, they breathe
Faint sickly kisses, and inweave my head in quite burial-bands.
The silent troops recede; within the fiery circle of their glance
Warm writhing woman-horses dance a shameless Bacchanal of sin;
Foam whips their reeking lips, and still the flower-witch
nestless to my lips,
Twines her swart lissome legs and hips, half serpent and half devil, till
My whole life seems to lie in her; her kisses draw my breath; my face
Loses its lustre in the grace of her quick bosom; sinister
The raving spectres reel; I see beyond my Circe’s eyes no shape
Save vague cloud-measures that escape the dances’ whirling witchery.
Their song is in my ears, that burn with their melodious
wickedness;
But in her heart my sorceress has songs more sinful, that I learn
As she sings slowly all their shame, and makes me tingle with delight
At new debaucheries, whose might rekindles blood and bone to flame.
The circle gathers. Negresses howl in the naked dance, and wheel
On poniard-blades of poisoned steel, and weep out blood in agonies;
Strange beast and reptile writhe; the song grows high and melancholy now;
The perfume savours every brow with lust unutterable of wrong;
Clothed with my flower-bride I sit, a harlot in a harlot’s dress,
And laugh with careless wickedness that strews the broad road of the Pit
With vine and myrtle and thy flower, my harlot-maiden, who for man
Now first forsakest thy leman, thy Eve, my Lilith, in this bower
Which we indwell, a deathless three, changeless and changing, as the pyre
Of earthly love becomes a fire to heat us through eternity.
I have forgotten Christ at last; he may look back, grown amorous,
And call across the gulf to us, and signal kisses through the vast;
We shall disdain, clasp vaster yet, and mock his newer pangs, and call
With stars and voices musical, jeers his touched heart shall not forget.
I would have pitied him. This flower spits blood upon him, so must I
Cast ashes through the misty sky to mock his faded crown of power,
And with our laughter’s nails refix his torn flesh faster to the wood,
And with more cruel zest make good the shackles of the Crucifix.
So be it, in thy arms I rest, lulled into silence by the strain
Of sweet love-whispers, while I drain damnation from thy tawny breast.
Nor heed the haggard sun’s eclipse, feeling thy perfume fill my hair,
And all thy dark caresses wear sin’s raiment on thy melting lips –
Nay, by the witchcraft of thy charms to sleep, nor drain that God survive;
To wake this, only to contrive – fresh passions in thy naked arms;
And at that moment when thy breath mixes with mine, like wine to call
Each memory, one merged into all, to kiss, to sleep, to mate with death!
TO MY FIRST-BORN
At last a father! In Mathilde’s womb
The poison quickens, and the tare-seeds shoot;
On my old upas-tree a bastard fruit
Is grafted. One more generation’s doom
Fixes its fangs. Crime’s flame, disease’s gloom,
Are thy birth-dower. Another prostitute
Predestined, born man, damned to grow a brute!
Another travels tainted to the tomb!
My sin, my madness, in thy blood are set,
A vile imperishable coronet,
To hound thee into hell! God spits at thee
The curse thy parents earned. Revenge be thine!
Kiss Lust, kill Truth, and worship at Sin’s shrine.
And foul His face with dung – thy infamy!
CHANT AU SAINT-ESPRIT
Bah! gros bougre du ciel!
Tu ne te plais pas seulement
Des chansons de Gabriel,
Ni non plus du sacrament
Très banal, ni des anthemes;
Mais l’horrible hurlement
De mes curieux blasphèmes
Te plaira, je parierai!
Jesus dit ces anathèmes:
“Vous ces choses qui direz,
Blasphémant le Saint-Esprit,
N’aurez pardon pour jamais!”
Néanmoins, Jesus, je dis!
Saint-Esprit, je crois a toi,
Suceur du callibistris
Du bon Dieu, ta douce loi
Moi je garderai toujours!
Salut, bon et puissant roi!
Je veux goûter tes amours,
Avoir ta belle Marie,
En la jouant les trois tours;
Derrière, et ventre aussi,
Et la belle bouche, après,
Quand je serai ramolli,
Ni la semer de bon blé,
Mais la sucer, si l’on ose
Après toi; je n’aimerais
Comme toi, en plein névrose,
Si je devine tes goûts,
La faire feuille-de-rose!
Eh, gros bougre? Es-tu fou
Que ta grosse bouche baise
(Quand la lune est moins aigüe)
Le bon vin au goût des fraises
De ces nymphes si sanglantes –
Ce qu’on nomme “les Anglaises”
Envie-tu ces amantes
Qui le culte de Sapho
Jouissent, petites tantes?
N’exiges-tu quelque impot
Sur ces fours des Lesbiennes
Pour ton bon petit jambot?
Permets-tu que ces chiennes
Boivent de ta Marie miel,
Sans que leur p’tits cuts tiennent
Mémoire de tes autels?
Ai-je dit assez, bretteur,
Pour m’assurer de l’enfer?
Bah! gros bougre du ciel!
Hermaphrodite’s Dream
I know that winged sprite
Who flew from heaven – was it hell?
Into these bounds of light
And music – yesternight –
Had some new song to tell.
I saw a living soul
Flame into mortal dress;
Whose glance – a fiery coal,
Whose lips – a ruby bowl
Whose wine was wickedness.
They were strange lips, I ween
Whereon no kiss might be,
And teeth were sharp therein;
Ivory and white and keen,
Tameless as hungering sea.
Strange body of my desire,
Voluptuous, lithe, and wan;
For, on my eyes drawn nigher,
My hot blood turns to fire,
Seeing nor maid nor man.
Not maid, not man – the breast
Like palaces of gold,
Yet where my lips caressed,
In the wild dove’s wild nest
A dove too soft to hold.
No dove that Hylas knew,
No dove that Sappho kissed,
Nor in wide Heaven there grew
This child of stranger dew
Than God’s good spirit wist.
Yet his wings bear him high,
Divine beyond control,
And, like for love to die,
I felt his arrow fly
Within my very soul.
Ah Love! the ambiguous kiss,
Not man’s nor woman’s touch,
In that estatic bliss –
Not hell’s heat, as I wish,
Had warmed us overmuch.
Ah! Love! how fierce that night!
With what unsung desire
Thy lips and mouth were bright,
In mine eye to give light,
And fire to kindle fire.
Ah Love! nor king nor queen
Of mine exhaustless flame,
But comrade of my teen,
Spouse of that epicene
Incontinence of shame.
Twin Love! Soul’s dual spouse,
Dream-serpent of my life,
Rose-garland of my brows
Within that ivory house,
Sex with itself at strife.
Were I a wanton stream,
Thou mightest bathe in me,
Yet in that happy dream
Methought my heart did deem
We mingled utterly.
O sexless! deathless! fair
Beyond the world to me,
Thy love-gift I will wear,
Thy joys my soul shall share,
Being made one with thee.
So, love, the days may keep
My nameless love from me;
Yet over slumber’s deep
I will sail into sleep
Diary of a Drug Fiend Page 83