Hungrige kom vi til Slagelse Bye; hvor nu er et Herberg,
Boede i fordums Tid, eensomt og roligt en Præst.
Rundt Vertinden omkring mig viste; hvor Kiøer og hvor Heste
Havde staaet tilforn, indbragtes Giesterne nu.
Viis var Indretningen giort, jeg Vertindens Sindrighed priste.
Selv nu i Slagels man seer, rundtom, Forædlingens Skridt!
Skyscrapers… remote, unpartisan…
Turning neither to the right nor left
Your imperturbable fronts….
Austerely greeting the sun
With one chilly finger of stone….
I know your secrets… better than all the policemen
like fat blue mullet along the avenues.
The skin of light enveloping this world lacks depth and I can actually see the black night of all these
similar bodies beneath the trembling veil and light of myself it is this night that even the mask of the
sun cannot hide from me I am the seer of night the auditor of silence for silence too is dressed in
sonorous skin and each sense has its own night even as I do I am my own night I am the conceiver
of non-being and of all its splendor I am the father of death she is its mother she whom I evoke
A flock of birds is flying high in the distance,
A lonely cloud drifts idly on its own.
We gaze at each other, neither growing tired,
There is only Jingting Shan.
Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.
Sir, say no more.
Within me 't is as if
The green and climbing eyesight of a cat
Crawled near my mind's poor birds.
Prythee, sing something sweet to me-you that can play
First and second at once. Then I too will essay
To croak on the pipes: and yon lad shall salute
Our ears with a melody breathed through his flute.
In the cave by the green oak our watch we will keep,
And goatish old Pan we'll defraud of his sleep.
Why does the horse-faced lady of just the unmentionable age
Walk down Longacre reciting Swinburne to herself, inaudibly?
Why does the small child in the soiled-white imitation fur coat
Crawl in the very black gutter beneath the grape stand?
Why does the really handsome young woman approach me in Sackville Street
Undeterred by the manifest age of my trappings?
I want nothing more but to speak simple, to be given this favour. Because we even charged the song with so much music that it is slowly sinking.
Come, the wind may never again
Blow as now it blows for us;
And the stars may never again shine as now they shine;
Long before October returns,
Seas of blood will have parted us;
And you must crush the love in your heart, and I the love in mine!
