13:09 May 23 2006
Times Read: 653
The Happy Corpse
Whereever the soil is rich and full of snails
I want to dig myself a nice deep grave -
deep enough to stretch out these old bones
and sleep in peace, like a shark in the cradling wave.
Testaments and tombstones always lie!
Before collecting such official grief,
I'd rather ask the crows, while I'm alive,
to pick my carcass clean from end to end.
They may be deaf and blind, my friends the worms,
yet surely they will welcome a happy corpse;
feasting philosophers, scions of decay,
eat your way through me without a secind thought
and let me know if one last twinge is left
for a souless body deader than the dead!
when i am dead, my dearest.
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
the Conqueror Worm
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
to trust
On my shoulders I support the sky.
Trust me to know and to do what is best,
And I will take care of the rest.
But trust is the color of a dark seed growing.
Trust is the color of a heart’s blood flowing.
Trust is the color of death.
Give me your trust, said the queen on her throne.
For I must bear the burden all alone.
Trust me to lead and to judge and to rule,
And no man will think you a fool.
But trust is the sound of the grave-dog’s bark.
Trust is the sound of betrayal in the dark.
Trust is the sound of a soul’s last breath.
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