SONG OF CREATION: ETÉ
by: Zella Muriel Wright
- T is good to be loved.
- A man waits for me
- Who will cover my body with kisses;
- He will bury his face in my hair;
- He will weep with joy at the touch of me.
- It is good to be loved.
-
- I wait for you in the dusk.
- How strange you seem tonight!
- Your eyes glisten with a burnished light,
- Like the eyes of a serpent,
- Like the eyes of a god.
- Wherever your eyes are turned upon me
- My flesh burns
- As tho' two coals were laid upon it;
- But I do not move.
- Why do you never take your eyes from me?
- Why do you tremble and grow so pale,
- You who were so radiant and rigid
- A moment ago?
- You touch me and drop weakly in a heap;
- There is no power in your muscles.
- But it is only the weakness before madness;
- A madness that gives you a ten-fold strength.
- For a second I shrink with fear,
- Lest in your ferocity, you devour me.
- Then I laugh--my whole body laughs;
- But I move not.
- On my lips there is a faint smile,
- Shall I tell you why I smile?
-
- I smile because I am happy;
- Because this instant is my instant
- In this eternity of eternities.
- Tonight I understand that life is not
- The groping, broken, half-thing
- It has always seemed.
"Song of Creation: Eté"
is reprinted from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New
York: Crown Publishers, 1921. |
MORE POEMS BY ZELLA MURIEL WRIGHT |
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