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Peotry and Fiction
One Poem
Full Moon
As I sat down one winter night
To roast before the fire,
I saw black coals transformed in light,
So like a funeral pyre.
Their solid mass was burning ice,
Their very source they sacrificed,
And I began to write.
Your love had filled the silent room
With orange, yellow, red —
Elements to banish gloom,
Ideas which must be fed.
Their vacant mass was tangible,
As sulphur's vaporous crucible,
Though why should this be said?
Your body is a written poem,
Which heaves, but will not tell;
My pen, a rigid, dripping omen
Whose odour you know well.
Now you have lain within my head
Where greyish matter is our bed,
The virgin page my hell.
The virgin page with surety
Took on the look of ash;
The blue and green impurities
Which make a fire flash
Had passed before my emptied eyes
As self-proclaimed and selfish lies
Of infidelity.
My body sweat, now dried away,
The owl pecks at my head;
The paper blemished, cold in day —
The terrible act is dead;
The powder in the cooling grate
Is guardian of poetic fate —
The moon hears what I say.