Classic Poem

The Chinese tapestry smolders on my wall like the blue smoke of old Chinese fires. It is peopled with little warriors and their wives, and pompous horses prance mightily across the glory of its woven story.
Dark faces glare at one another, banners hurl their folds. Spears threaten in and out of a tangle of willow-tree and almond-blossom, tower and battlement and castle gate:
O faded, silken tale of faded vengeance, pride and hate!
On come the warriors in their brocaded coats — they sit their red saddles well! I hear a clash, a shouting in an unknown tongue — war-cry of Ming or Han or Sung — tiny swords buzz like darting wasps steel-winged;
And women peep from out their pointed tent and canopied wheel-chair, lolling complacent there, and lift their babes that they may better hear the loud, proud sound of battling sires:
And the Chinese tapestry smolders on like the blue smoke of Chinese fires.
*****

There is a strangeness of sweet smelling in my room that is not of bud nor bloom. My garden hangs its head before a presence mocking it, laughing from the wall, the perfume woven in my tapestry, perfume of mystery, perfume of China.
The heavy-lidded East is speaking and the lilies on my table droop and die.
Each morning I find a withered havoc in the room where hangs the Chinese tapestry. Each morning the presence waits for me there and clings — Close, violent, insistent.
Once at night I felt behind me a stealthy moving of the door, something seemed pulling it toward the latch, and the perfume slipping, sliding, along the floor, reaching toward me in the dark!
How fumbling my fingers at the lamp — how slow the sodden wick —

*****

But with the glimmer and the glow I got away —
From what?
I do not know.

*****

Woven perfume! You sing to me across the mists of race and creed, the clouds of time, a little tune of unknown key that is not unmelodious. You hang your rhythms about me like a robe too-heavily embroidered with desire; you wreathe me in the red, unfolding fire of poppy-flowers, whispering of their unhurried dreams and strange, mad ceremonies of the senses. My drowsy peace seems but an emptiness of inert hours and my content, an ignorance!
The very moon looks smug to-night, casting its monotone of patterned shade and light on my trimmed paths and lawns and roses' trained delight! And yet —
This is the moon that rocked me as a child, my mild and honest moon, and these the stars that spangled through my nursery-window:
Not your hot lantern swinging in too purple skies and all its whirling fireflies!
I will not listen to your story nor to the song you sing, O rustling rainbow thing of ancient warp and woof:

No, I will put you from me — very gently —

Will fold you in my cedar-chest —

Forget you! And the discomfort of your beauty!
Sleep, warriors of bright-recording thread, long dead, passionate and pagan heroes of a slow-crumbled loom, sleep — close to your slant-eyed women: Dream your unbroken dream divine:

Pray to your gods!
Pray to your gods!
And let me pray to mine.