Flamboyante

two poems

FLAMBOYANTE

I think of the world

As a city of great age,

And of the oldest feeling in the youngest heart.

Step back, as for the passing of a girl;

Down a cascade of stairs she comes to greet or part

From you, the lover, primitive with rage.

She is a flame in an old darkness.

Touch her, and the swaying of her gown

Wakes the smouldering sleepers of the town,

As though across the window pane

The skies were faintly lit again

With the conflagration of a long-forgotten fervor or distress.

And there, from many doorways in alcove,

The many faces of awakening love

Think of the darkest doorway of them all

Where you, the lover, wait with no pretense,

Nor pity what is past recall,

As though the flame could never smell of innocence.

Who in the morning's gaudy light

Will know at just what point of turning

She stood in your path, the pallid, bright,

The elegance of yearning,

And spoke to all the darkness of your name,

As though it were your flesh that still must sire the flame?