Among my other gifts I own also Wantonness. In proof of which I am
wishing as I sit here for a Thousand careless kisses: eleven o’clock
of still evening--a Thousand Kisses.
A wonderful, wonderful attribute, Wantonness: rich, rich luster in
the conscious temperament which owns it, a Gift-thing delicate and
gorgeous.
By it I want a Thousand Kisses: a Thousand--made all of Wantonness.
Kisses come in differing kinds and only one is Wanton.
The kiss of a lover has an intense cosmic use: the kiss of a mother
is tender fostering food: the kiss of a friend is vantage and grace
of friendliness: the kiss of a child is cool charm of snowflakes and
green springtime leaves.
And the kiss of Wantonness is not of use, nor of food, nor of gracing
vantage, nor of childhood charm--but is restless essence of humanness
and worldliness and mere sheer limitless encompassing liking: born of
sweet lips, alien it might be, and secretly ‘unattuned,’ but warm and
fond and _present_: answering the pathos of infinite jejuneness which
flows, flows always in red human blood.
Through the race rides a long dread wistfulness, made of tears and
lies and the barbaric distress and pitfall of everyday’s journey: a
crying wish for a cup of warmed drugged sweet ease to turn it all a
moment away: but a moment away.
And through all the race is the measureless poetry, purling and
mantling in its bowl of flesh. Each human one is made of the sun,
and made of the moon, and made of the four winds and the seas and
the last pink sea-foam on the crests of the twilit waves: and made
of salt and of sugar and of lonesome calling of loons and quick song
of skylarks: and made of sword-edges and of money and of dolls and
toys and painted glass: and made of loose reckless shuffling of dry
autumn leaves, and of nerves and of illusions and of broken food and
hesitance: and made of Mother-Goose rhymes and of cigarette-ashes and
of raveled silk: and made of layers and layers of mixed-up passionate
colors and of gilded cakes and of strawberries and of temperamental
orgasms and raw silvery onions and gaming and dancing and
minute-by-minute inconsistency: all veiled in a thin gold veil--all
in a thin gold veil.
Betwixt the wistfulness and the poetry--_hélas_, what chance has
the human equation, unsought, unwarned, unchallenged of God to be
straitly equable!
No chance.
Happily no chance.
Thus I, Mary MacLane, so conscious of Me and garbledly gifted, want
a Thousand Kisses at eleven o’clock of a still evening.
No spirit-hands of Love are laid soft on my drooping shoulders in the
passing days: no Love--no Love--in all my life.
No miracle Wonder and Gentleness stirs in and against my Heart: my
Heart is strangely dead of a strange Realness, known and felt but
unachieved:--no Love--no Love in my life.
And I can wish for no Love, for the listless Heart is listlessly dead.
I wish instead, in hastening present clock-ticking moments, for a
Thousand present-warmed Kisses: a Thousand in Wanton response to a
Wanton ’leven-o’clock.
Dominating waving washing warmth of Wantonness, compassing me at
eleven o’clock.
A Thousand careless insouciant Kisses: a Thousand gorgeous delicate
Kisses: a round Thousand.
From what lips--whose lips--what do I know?--: so their Kisses are a
Thousand.
From what lips--what do I care?--: so they be eager and live and
tenderly false.
--come some of the Thousand glowing on my pink lips, and my white
fingers, which were tense, relax--
--come more of the Thousand, and my rigid hard-riding thoughts grow
drowsy and pliant and negligible.
--come more of the Thousand, and my knees and the marrow in my bones
are gently aware of most logical opiate ease--
--come more of the Thousand, and my midriff is full of cream-and-chocolate
casualness and my smooth arms are washed down with mists of custom.
--come more of the Thousand, and my seven senses start to melt at the
edges--
--come more of the Thousand, and the palms of my hands wax merely
pleasant-feeling and the soles of my feet fatly comfortable--
--come the last of the Thousand in a swirling silly lovely
lightly-insane shower--and I feel exactly like a woman in the next
street who goes forth clad in mustard-and-cerise with a devilish
black-and-white Valeska-Suratt parasol: and more--much more--I feel
the way she _looks_--
For this Wanton-thing is not amour but psychology: in it I am less
the mænad than the philosopher: less the Cyprian woman than the Muse.