THE BARBER

by: John Gray

DREAMED I was a barber; and there went

Beneath my hand, oh! names extravagant.

Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask

Of many a pleasant girl. It was my task

To gild their hair, carefully, strand by strand;

To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand;

To draw a bodkin, from a vase of kohl,

Through the closed lashes; pencils from a bowl

Of Sepia to paint them underneath;

To blow upon their eyes with a soft breath.

Then lay them back and watched the leaping bands.

 

The dream grew vague. I moulded with my hands

The mobile breasts, the valley; and the waist

I touched; and pigments reverently placed

Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains,

Beryls and crysolites and diaphanes,

And gems whose hot harsh names are never said,

I was a masseur; and my fingers bled

With wonder as I touched their awful limbs.

 

Suddenly, in the marble trough, there seems

O, last of my pale mistresses, Sweetness!

A twy-lipped scarlet pansy. My caress

Tinge thy steel-gray eyes to violet.

Adown thy body skips the pit-a-pat

Of treatment once heard in a hospital

For plagues that fascinate, but half appal.

 

So, at the sound, the blood of one stood cold.

My chaste hair ripened into sudden gold.

The throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth

The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth.

And on the belly pallid blushes crept,

That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.

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