Mother And Son

Now all day long the man who is not dead

Hastens the dark with inattentive eyes,

The woman with white hand and erect head

Stares at the covers, leans for the son's replies

At last to her importunate womanhood-

Her hand of death laid on the living bed;

So lives the fierce compositor of blood.

She waits; he lies upon the bed of sin

Where greed, avarice, anger writhed and slept

Till to their silence they were gathered in:

There, fallen with time, his tall and bitter kin

Once fired the passions that were never kept

In the permanent heart, and there his mother lay

To bear him on the impenetrable day.

The falcon mother cannot will her hand

Up to the bed, nor break the manacle

His exile sets upon her harsh command

That he should say the time is beautiful-

Transfigured by her own possessing light:

The sick man craves the impalpable night.

Loosed betwixt eye and lid, the swimming beams

Of memory, blind school of cuttlefish,

Rise to the air, plunge to the cold streams-

Rising and plunging the half-forgotten wish

To tear his heart out in a slow disgrace

And freeze the hue of terror to her face.

Hate, misery, and fear beat off his heart

To the dry fury of the woman's mind;

The son, prone in his autumn, moves apart

A seed blown upon a returning wind.

O child, be vigilant till towards the south

On the flowered wall all the sweet afternoon,

The reaching sun, swift as the cottonmouth,

Strikes at the black crucifix on her breast

Where the cold dusk comes suddenly to rest-

Mortality will speak the victor soon!

The dreary flies, lazy and casual,

Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall.

O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould

Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.

The bright wallpaper, imperishably old,

Uncurls and flutters, it will never fall.