Indian nocturne

I

HERE night is a beginning
never an end:
trivial, incidental,
unregretted in dust
a withered day dies
and the great harlot-goddess Night resumes
again her briefly broken reign of lust.

Under the coldly blazing maniac moon
the senses swoon
sick with the night-flowers' bitter-sweet perfumes,
thick cloying garlands wreathing
the tired disquieted brain in seething
visions of evil harvests reaped.

The blooms lie heaped
on an altar
itself a tomb:
the bride’s bright flowers
rotting wreaths on the corpse—
now the whore’s paint upon the skull wears thin;
corruption and decay, and old dark sin,
ooze from the bones of history in these hours.

II

The sun all day has stilled
noise under stifling heat
and killed
clamour with a lance of flame.

Now from the swamps call out
the ancient dead, crept from their sun-cracked tombs,
creaked joint and croaking mouth,
to slake their eternal drouth,
cackling lascivious senile commentaries
from throats half-stopt with grave-dust.

And Night's own voice is heard
from the crouched group around the sluttish fire,
a wailing chant, half sorrow, half desire—
and Death provides the bass
in the blood-beat of graveward pulsing drums—
so to her harvesting again Night comes.

11 May 1945