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I Barbara,
Last night I saw an ancient man And my hands were claw-like-knots
With golden mirrors in each hand, Stiff from choaking throats.
And looking at me with reproach I felt the heat drain from my limbs,
He held the mirrors to my face I felt my toothless gums;
While saying in a weary voice: I tried to pray, but in my stead
"Mine is the goal and yours the choice." A grinning deamon stood!
And in my mind death's heads appeared,
llooked and saw, each mirror was And all the things that I had feared
Made and polished with God's laws; Were overblown, and found within
And each,when looked upon, at length Those sunken eyes, that lipless grin!
Magnified their mystic strength Base mockery was the fruit
So that the viewer might behold Of that dry chamber called my throat.
Himself and others growing old. And lines of hate and lines of lust
Had turned my skin to rasping crust;
Within the first glass I descried My eyes were serpant eyes.
Those men who loveless, live and die: I knew my pounding heart to be
(Their's is Sure the lower part Turned to a base parody,
Of life, for they have touched no heart!) And its simple truths to lies.
Their face is made a horrid mask
Through wrangling with worldly tasks, "Enough!" I screamed, and turned my face
And failing love, in scorn they ride, Upward to the universe:
Filled both with self-contempt and pride; Vexation rested on the stars
Their minds are flushed with pain- (Great brooding clouds obscured their fires-
And so their calloused souls they seek And Barbara, While you slept,
In laughing women, bitter drink, I knelt upon the ground and wept.)
And all that stupifies their brain. How could I live with knowledge that
I recognized their faces! I In time I would be soul bereft?
Became at one with companies I would be vile, I would be vain,
Of the barren, dumb, and lost, Chief friend of Evil, prey to Pain!
Their hearts forever stopped with dust. The moon would wince to shed her light
Upon the chaos I'd create;
I moved among their numbers in And with my touch, worse things I'd prove
A hissing hell, a SWOonof sin. Upon a world that gave no love!
I heard their creaking joints, they seemed
Not men, but ghastly man-machines Soon I heard a weary voice:
That moving forward, become less "Mine is the goal and yours the choice."
Stifled by fierce Loneliness?
II
And then I saw the blear of age The ancient man came from the dark
Enter my affrighted eyes, And with a gesture said: "Arise!"
He caught me in his boney arms
And touched my sense with his strange eyes.
