22
CHICAGO MAY
May God damn every hour that severs us!
‘May God excite each hour to holy joy
‘That breaks the bestially monotonous
Madness and shame of your own boy, your boy
That is no man, no beast, not even God
In those pale hours that you and he apart
Drain the black poison of the period,
Smite all damnation into either heart—
(© Jesus! is there pity, is there none?
Is there no peace, no passion in the sky?
Is there no fervour in the blasting sun
To make a symphony of sympathy?
‘Oh, but if I were only with you—when ?—
‘Who knows if all our passion would suffice
Us who were forced—we, Laylah now and then
To bathe our bodies in the vats of vice?
Why is our heaven so critical a point ?
Why does life tremble on so tense a string?
Why should so rare an oil as ours anoint
‘The brazen brows of a usurping king?
Is it not in our right that you and 1,
No more you and I, should be some third thing, given
Not by the Gods, nor chance, nor Destiny,
But—by what That that is beyond hell and heaven ?
Lost, lost, for ever lost we are; I know
No word to answer the eternal Why,
No spell that may subdue the eternal woe
‘That “ you” are somehow different from 11"
Lost, lost! O may not death discover spells?
Has not the spasm of dissolution charms?