 | The Complete Poems and Collected Letters of Adelaide Crapsey |  |
La Morte
Vision of vice grown old,
Harlot with wisped grey hair
Streaked drab and green
Where once was false gold's sheen,
Slack chin, rough wrinkled cheeks, lips bloodless cold,
Going at mid-day through the city streets
In hideous slattern guise;
She whose whole business was to show her body's sweets
Alluringly, indifferent leaves her ugliness unobscured.
Harlot with wisped grey hair
Streaked drab and green
Where once was false gold's sheen,
Slack chin, rough wrinkled cheeks, lips bloodless cold,
Going at mid-day through the city streets
In hideous slattern guise;
She whose whole business was to show her body's sweets
Alluringly, indifferent leaves her ugliness unobscured.
And yet look long and secretly..
Doth there not emanate from where
She is a strange concentrate glow?
Doth not the air about her show
A dove-throat iridescence copper-blue? .. beauty mysteriously
Present in scum blurred thin on stagnant ill-odoured pond?
Corpse-light of lust.. desire's fixed death-filmed eyes.
Still ghost of touch once live and eager-fond..
Who kissed her pale stale lips would kiss ten thousand thousand kisses sepulchered.
Doth there not emanate from where
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Doth not the air about her show
A dove-throat iridescence copper-blue? .. beauty mysteriously
Present in scum blurred thin on stagnant ill-odoured pond?
Corpse-light of lust.. desire's fixed death-filmed eyes.
Still ghost of touch once live and eager-fond..
Who kissed her pale stale lips would kiss ten thousand thousand kisses sepulchered.
| The Complete Poems and Collected Letters of Adelaide Crapsey | |