Complete Poems

When you perform this solemn rite
You echo and reflect my love.
Gathering while it may
The moonlit hours
Into a playful spray,
The fountain flowers,
Only to fall away,
As playing sours.

Of a Heaven to call your own, read on –
Learn how to love, and be, a ne’er-do-well.
Have pity on my soul. Or go to Hell.

I am a graveyard, hated by the moon,
Where worms, with dust I loved, hold intercourse,
Distending endlessly like my remorse;
An old boudoir where fashions from the past,
Perfumed by withered roses, gather must;

Provocative, alive,
Intensifies the stage-set solitude
Of a sinister love,
A saturnalia, a feast of shame,
A scene that titillates
The host of wicked cupidons aswarm
Behind the curtain pleats.
But judging from the subtle curvature,
The writhing elegance
Of hip and thigh – as if a serpent were
Aroused and made to dance

mid the luxuries, the plush divans,
Crystal and bibelots,
Statues and tapestries and perfumed gowns
Fallen in lavish folds
In the dark room, a motionless hothouse
Whose leaden atmosphere
Has fetid flowers trapped in their cut glass
Coffins gasping for air

Prince of Darkness, hear me when I call!
Who teach the weak in spirit not to shun
Compassion from the barrel of a gun,
OSatan, lift my spirits once again!

Release me, Satan, from this misery!
Whose massive hand conceals the precipice

The truth is, I’m afraid your coquetry
Will drive away the hearts you hope to win:
The human heart can’t take much mockery

Come massive hearses for my dreams;
Your sky’s in mourning, so it seems,
Enshrining pride inside its shroud;
Your fiery colours seem to come
From Hell, to make my heart at home.

And like the sun in its antarctic hell,
My heart will be a lump of bloody ice.