152 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
Every drop of the river
Of blood aflame and a-quiver
With poison secret and sour—
With a sudden twitch at the last —
Like certain jagged daggers.
(With bloodshot eyes dull-glassed
The screaming Malay staggers
Through his village aghast).
So blood wrenches its pain
Sardonic through heart and brain.
Every separate nerve
Awake and alert, on a curve
Whose asymptote’s name is “
In a hyperbolic “ for ever!”
A bitten and burning snake
Striking its venom within it,
As if it might serve to slake
The pain for the tithe of a minute.
never ”
Awake, for ever awake!
Awake as. one never is >
While sleep is a possible end,
Awake in the void, the abyss
Whose thirst is an echo of this
That martyrs, world without end,
(World without end, Amen })
The man that falters and yields ,
For the proverb’s ‘“‘ month and an hour”
To the lure of the snow-starred fields
Where the opium poppy’s aflower.
Only the prick of a needle
Charged from a wizard well!
Is this sufficient to wheedle
A soul from heaven to hell?
Was man’s spirit weaned
From fear of its ghosts and gods
To fawn at the feet of a fiend?
Is it such terrible odds—