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.