Voyages V

White Buildings

Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though castTogether in one merciless white blade-The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.

- As if too brittle or too clear to touch!The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.One frozen trackless smile … What wordsCan strangle this deaf moonlight? For we

Are overtaken. Now no cry, no swordCan fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight lovedAnd changed . “There’s

Nothing like this in the world,” you say,is Knowing I cannot touch your hand and lookToo, into that godless cleft of skyWhere nothing turns but dead sands flashing.

“-And never to quite understand!” No,In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamedNothing so flagless as this piracy.

But nowDraw in your head, alone and too tall here.Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.

from White Buildings (1926)