Where on the tables chattering-white The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.
Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles, Shroud wooden faces in their wiles--
Sometimes they splash like water (you Yourself reflected in their hue).
The conversation loud and bright Seems spinal bars of shunting light
In firework-spurting greenery. O complicate machinery
For building Babel, iron crane Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane
In noise and murder like the sea Without its mutability!
Outside the bar where jangling heat Seems out of tune and off the beat--
A concertina's glycerine Exudes, and mirrors in the green
Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints Of tentative and half-soiled tints.
The carriage brushes through the bright Leaves (violent jets from life to light); Strong polished speed is plunging, heaves Between the showers of bright hot leaves The window-glasses glaze our faces And jar them to the very basis-- But they could never put a polish Upon my manners or abolish My most distinct disinclination For calling on a rich relation! In her house--(bulwark built between The life man lives and visions seen)-- The sunlight hiccups white as chalk, Grown drunk with emptiness of talk, And silence hisses like a snake-- Invertebrate and rattling ache.... Then suddenly Eternity Drowns all the houses like a sea And down the street the Trump of Doom Blares madly--shakes the drawing-room Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn As dank dark nettles. Down the horn Of her ear-trumpet I convey The news that "It is Judgment Day!" "Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear." I roared: "_It is the Trump we hear!_" "The _What?_" "_THE TRUMP!_" "I shall complain! .... the boy-scouts practising again."
The evening found us whom the day had fled, Once more in bitter anger, you and I, Over some small, some foolish, trivial thing Our anger would not decently let die, But dragged between us, shamed and shivering Until each other's taunts we scarcely heard, Until we lost the sense of all we said, And knew not who first spoke the fatal word. It seemed that even every kiss we wrung We killed at birth with shuddering and hate, As if we feared a thing too passionate. However close we clung One hour the next hour found us separate, Estranged, and Love most bitter on our tongue.