I should like to say to the world...

I should like to say to the world:

I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;

Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting the sky,

Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,

Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,

Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.

I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour

Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and shout,

In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled stallions,

Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....

But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,

To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,

I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola

Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes

And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.