Listen, the darkness rings As it circulates round our fire.

Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat Your b.r.e.a.s.t.s, your nakedness!

This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips, As the firelight falls and leaps From your feet to your lips!

_NEW YEAR'S NIGHT_

Now you are mine, to-night at last I say it; You're a dove I have bought for sacrifice, And to-night I slay it.

Here in my arms my naked sacrifice!

Death, do you hear, in my arms I am bringing My offering, bought at great price.

She's a silvery dove worth more than all I've got.

Now I offer her up to the ancient, inexorable G.o.d, Who knows me not.

Look, she's a wonderful dove, without blemish or spot!

I sacrifice all in her, my last of the world, Pride, strength, all the lot.

All, all on the altar! And death swooping down Like a falcon. 'Tis G.o.d has taken the victim; I have won my renown.

_VALENTINE'S NIGHT_

You shadow and flame, You interchange, You death in the game!

Now I gather you up, Now I put you back Like a poppy in its cup.

And so, you are a maid Again, my darling, but new, Unafraid.

My love, my blossom, a child Almost! The flower in the bud Again, undefiled.

And yet, a woman, knowing All, good, evil, both In one blossom blowing.

_BIRTH NIGHT_

THIS fireglow is a red womb In the night, where you're folded up On your doom.

And the ugly, brutal years Are dissolving out of you, And the stagnant tears.

I the great vein that leads From the night to the source of you, Which the sweet blood feeds.

New phase in the germ of you; New sunny streams of blood Washing you through.

You are born again of me.

I, Adam, from the veins of me The Eve that is to be.

What has been long ago Grows dimmer, we both forget, We no longer know.

You are lovely, your face is soft Like a flower in bud On a mountain croft.

This is Noel for me.

To-night is a woman born Of the man in me.

_RABBIT SNARED IN THE NIGHT_

WHY do you spurt and sprottle like that, bunny?

Why should I want to throttle you, bunny?

Yes, bunch yourself between my knees and lie still.

Lie on me with a hot, plumb, live weight, heavy as a stone, pa.s.sive, yet hot, waiting.

What are you waiting for?

What are you waiting for?

What is the hot, plumb weight of your desire on me?

You have a hot, unthinkable desire of me, bunny.

What is that spark glittering at me on the unutterable darkness of your eye, bunny?

The finest splinter of a spark that you throw off, straight on the tinder of my nerves!

It sets up a strange fire, a soft, most unwarrantable burning a bale-fire mounting, mounting up in me.

'Tis not of me, bunny.

It was you engendered it, with that fine, demoniacal spark you jetted off your eye at me.

_I_ did not want it, this furnace, this draught-maddened fire which mounts up my arms making them swell with turgid, ungovernable strength.

'Twas not _I_ that wished it, that my fingers should turn into these flames avid and terrible that they are at this moment.

It must have been _your_ inbreathing, gaping desire that drew this red gush in me; I must be reciprocating _your_ vacuous, hideous pa.s.sion.

It must be the want in you that has drawn this terrible draught of white fire up my veins as up a chimney.

It must be you who desire this intermingling of the black and monstrous fingers of Moloch in the blood-jets of your throat.

Come, you shall have your desire, since already I am implicated with you in your strange l.u.s.t.

_PARADISE RE-ENTERED_

THROUGH the strait gate of pa.s.sion, Between the bickering fire Where flames of fierce love tremble On the body of fierce desire:

To the intoxication, The mind, fused down like a bead, Flees in its agitation The flames' stiff speed: