The Winged Beetle

ROSA COELI 3 Upon the sepulchres, the dizzy seas Of this my mind, Sabbatic rout that spanned These straits my soul ! Ay, they are dead and drowned (And damned, I doubt !) Ah God ! I am exhaust In the red moon’s holocaust ! God ! God ! The chasms secret and profound Suck down the porphyry flood Of your maniacal, ensorcelled blood That maddens and bewitches. My life is suffocated—now I swoon— I die ! I am in hell, red hell, red hell, Circles me closer ; all the soul’s afire As if the boreal moon With all the icy Lapland hags That shiver on ‘s hibernal crags Were but a thin white shell Hoarding the seed of many a million suns, Giving its life up unto its desire— Out bursts the womb of my unguessed-at godhead ; The rose flames out in the flood ; and all at once, A brilliance disembodied, I am shattered like the dew upon your leaves ; So that the lampless hour Strikes, and an unborn universe perceives Its lonely mother-flower, Us, in our love’s arcane Briatic bower. We scatter light, a music-tingling shower ; We breathe out life, a crimson whisper ;