Ambergris

58 AMBERGRIS Oh, mother, Oh, Demeter, in my burthen Let me assume my sorrow singular ; A branching temple and an altar earthen, A fire of herbs, a clayen water-jar ; An olive grove to bind the sacred girth in Lone woods afar. Let life burn gently thence, as when the ember In one faint incense-puff to shrineward dies. No care, no pain, no craving to remember, One leap toward the knees and destinies, Where shine Her lips like flames, Her breasts like amber, Like moons Her eyes. For my heart turns—ah still !—in Sorrow’s traces, Where sad chill footprints pash the sodden leaves ; Where ranged around me are the cold, gray faces ; Fallon on the stubble are the rotten sheaves ; The vicious ghosts abound ; and Chronos paces No soul deceives. Yet my heart looks to Madness as its mother, Remembering who once caught me by the well ; And strange loves of that misshapen Other, The feast of blood, the cold enchanted dell, Where fire was filtered up through earth to smother Sick scents of hell. And that wild night when vine-leaves wooed and clustered Round my wild limbs, and like a women I went Over the mountains—how the Northwind blustered !— And slew with them the beast, and was content. The madness :—Oh ! the dreadful light that lustred The main event. Ay ! the wild whirlings in the woodland reaches ; The ghastly smile upon the Stone God’s lip ; The rigid tremors, anguish that beseeches From eye to eye fresh fervours of the whip ;