Masculine souls pass across the mirrors: Whirling, gliding ecstasies-- Retreating, retreating, Dimly, dimly, Like dreams fading across the mirrors. Then the mirrors, Stark and brilliant in the sunshine, Blank as the desert, Blank as the Sphinx, Winking golden eyes in the twinkles of light, Silent, immutable, vacuous infinity, Illimitable capacity for absorption, Absorbing nothing. Have the shapes and the shadows been swallowed up In your recesses without depth, You drinkers of life, Twinkling maliciously Your golden yellow eyes, Mirrors winking in the sunshine? PENELOPE Gray old spinners, Weaving with the crafty fibers of your souls; Nothing was given you but those impalpable threads. Yet you have bound the race, Stranglers, With your silver spun mysteries. All the cruel, All the mad, The foolish, And the beautiful, too: It all belongs to you Since the first time That you began to drop the filmy threads When the world was half asleep. Sometimes you are young girls; Sometimes there are roses in your hair. But I know you-- Sitting back there in the hollow shadows of your wombs. The crafty fibers of your souls Are woven in and out With the fibers of life. POOR PEOPLE'S DREAMS Sometimes women with eyes like wet green berries Glide across the slick mirror of their own smiles And vanish through lengths of gold and marble drawing rooms. The marble smiles, As sensuous as snow; Hips of the Graces; Shoulders of Clytie; Breasts frozen as foam, Frozen as camelia bloom; Mounds of marble flesh, Inexplicable wonder of white.... I dream about statuesque beauties Who look from the shadows of opera boxes; Or elegant ladies in novels of eighteen thirty, At the hunt ball... Reflections in a polish floor, A portrait by Renoir, A Degas dancing girl, English country houses, An autumn afternoon in the Bois, Something I have read of... In sleep one vision retreating through another, Like mirrors being doors to other mirrors, Satin, and lace, and white shoulders, And elegant ladies, Dancing, dancing. FOR WIVES AND MISTRESSES Death, Being a woman, Being passive like all final things, Being a mother, Waits. Shining faces Gray and melt into her flesh. Death envies those asleep in her, Little children who have come back, Fiery faces, Bright for a moment in the darkness, Extinguished softly in her womb. PORTRAITS PORTRAIT OF RICH OLD LADY Old lady talks, Spins from her lips Warp and woof Of teapots, tables, napery, Sanitary toilets, Old bedsteads, pictures on walls, And fine lace, Spins a cocoon of this secondary life. Warm and snug is old lady's belly. Old lady makes Venus Aphrodite Parvenue. Old lady Arranges places for courtesans In warm outbuildings on back streets. NIGGER