Dresden china shepherdesses Whirl in the silver sunshine: Columbine stars Float in gauze petticoats of light.... Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old, Smelling of jasmine and camphor: Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts.... The pirouetting tune dies.... Stars and little faded faces, Waltzing, waltzing, Shoot slowly downward On tinkling music, Dusty little flowers Sinking into oblivion. After the music, Quiet, The glacial period renewed, Monsters on earth, A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights-- These too vanishing-- Silence unending. RESURRECTION IMMORTALITY Death is a child of stone. Death is a little white stone goat. The little goat child dances motionless. Little kid feet make a circle around the world: Bas-relief of Death, Little stone goats capering across the clouds. Perhaps Death is nearest in the spring. Then Her flower clouds the woods with white blossoms, Apple blossoms, quince blossoms, Pear snow. These are the flowers that drift in the hair of the dead. The sun shines on stone eyelids That melt with light. This smile is a pale happiness; It glows motionless On the rocky hillside and the long stems of trees. There are no shadows in this happy light: The glow beat by little goat hoofs Chiseled across the clouds in motionless delight, While suns fade behind crumbling hillsides And hungry illusions vanish In generation after generation. AUTUMN NIGHT The moon is as complacent as a frog. She sits in the sky like a blind white stone, And does not even see Love As she caresses his face with her contemptuous light. She reaches her long white shivering fingers Into the bowels of men. Her tender superfluous probing into all that pollutes Is like the immodesty of the mad. She is a mad woman holding up her dress So that her white belly shines. Haughty, Impregnable, Ridiculous, Silent and white as a debauched queen, Her ecstasy is that of a cold and sensual child. She is Death enjoying Life, Innocently, Lasciviously. VENUS' FLY TRAP A wax bubble moon trembles on the honey-blue horizon. Softly heated by your breast Pearl wax languorously unfolds her lily lips of mist, Swells about you, Weaves you into herself through each moist pore, Absorbs you deliciously, Destroys you. SUICIDE A dirty little beetle Peers into motionless eyes Transfixed to their depths As by shining needles. Limbs are taut in ultimate resentment. A bare sky confronts an upturned face. Like a wheel vanishing in speed The corpse, containing everything, Has swallowed itself. LEAVES I The women hold a child up for a shield, And speak of it tenderly, Seeing it bloody. II The lovers throw back the scented coverlet And are afraid. Seeing Death in their own nakedness, They shroud it with flowers. III