They’ll think when I pass through that door
To-morrow in the dawn,
I’ll then be going to my death.
_It’s I’ve already gone._
They’ll watch me walk serenely out,
Still-nerved and somber-eyed,
‘So strong,’ they’ll say, ‘to meet her death.’
_To-day it is I died._
There’ll be my pulses quick with life,
My white sweet throat, my breath:
But flesh and bone are all will hang.
_This noon I met my death._
For days I charmedly dwelt on death--
I raved at death--I swore--
Till vexédly death waived the date:
_And came this Day-Before._
From being lured with artful thoughts
My life abortive grew.
From being broached in livid mood
_My death aborted too._
To-morrow they’ll remark my calm--
No fuss, no fright, no swoon.
They’ll kill a wench to-morrow dawn
_Was dead to-day at noon._
Three oddnesses are in that dream:
that it is true to life in that I in my lightning Mary-Mac-Lane-ness
_would_ manage to cheat a gallows.
that it is untrue to life in that instead of writing of it in the
true twilit poetry of my own sufficient prose I wrote it in the
shallow trick-phrasing of rhyme, a little serenade to the gibbet.
that it catches and holds my Shadow-self who lives not _in_side me
but _be_side me: the resembling dissembling shadow I cast when I
stand between the daylights of the actual world and the quivering
films of the region of dreams.--
My owned mysteries thrive apace. They are poetry and beauty and
loveliness yet they bruise and batter me and split me to atoms.
Withal are terrifyingly superfluous: they violently kill the wench
to-morrow dawn who died restfully to-day at noon.
_An ancient witch-light_