The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE EQUINOX “T fear she was bad, for from me were twisted such devious messages, such various, unalike reports, that yes and no became counters of speech almost indistinguishable to my thinking. Once, I remember, there trickled from me a vagrant little flow of words, so bitter and so inviting, so poisonous and yet so intoxicating, that the soul for whom they were meant held up the silver goblets of hearing for its own destruction with trembling, greedy hands, covetous and anxious, hungry and afraid. Her voice that purled and rippled and sang through me—ah! it was like a kiss caged in her throat, and to hear it made a man a father in longing. There are voices like that, and when men hear them, they live a lifetime in an instant, mate, rear children, are widowed, or have their eyes closed for them for the last time by these women whose souls they thus secretly and inviolately espouse.” After a little silence the worm which issued from her eyes then spoke: “IT am her eyes, and she was bad, bad as her mouth says. Some of that mouth’s warm tribute came indeed to me, and I was shut from seeing with the close lips of men beating time to the superb madness of their love music with rhythmic kisses. And I saw—O what I saw!—mountains that bowed to her, and stringed necklaces of stars that flashed in ecstasy on Eternity’s bosom from the very sight of her. Seas over which she passed on a sensuous errand as live and tremulous as the heave of their own great hearts—heaves that are the world’s sighs for the little brood that teases it, and festers the green and waving glory of its skin and hair. 320