When you are tired of ogling moltenly,
Your undertones explosively confess.
A shop-girl coughing over her cigarette
Expresses the burlesque of your distress.
Take your cocaine. It leaves a blistering stain,
But phantom diamonds are immune from greed.
You pluck them from the buttons of your vest,
Wildly apologising for your need.
Take more. Redress the thinness of your neck
With diamonds; entertain them with your breast;
Cajole them on the floor with fingertips
That cannot pause, dipped in a demon’s zest.
If you had not relented to a man
Who meddled with your face and stole your clothes,
Your shrill creative pleasures might be still
Incarcerated in the usual pose.
Hysteria shot its fist against your face
One day, and left the blood-spot of your mouth,
But when the morning strikes you there will be
More than hysteria in your answering shout.
V
Laughter is a skeleton’s applause:
Grief sells increase to sterility:
Happiness protects its subtle flaws.
These three significances make
The part of you that men can see,
As you recline upon this bed,
Your hand defending one bare knee,
Your shoulders trapped upon the quilt.
But under the warm sophistry
That turns your flesh, another form
Abstractly bellicose and free
Attacks the answer of your blood.
Freedom is the lowest note
Of slavery, and slavery
The lowest freedom--you can feel
The charm of your servility.
True, you were once a chamber-maid
Who won a thief and spoke to grief,
And now your limbs have numbly strayed.
Are these not harmless travesties?