Читать книгу Song-Surf - Rice Cale Young - Страница 8

Down the palm-way from Eden in the mid-night

Lay dreaming Eve by her outdriven mate,

Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet

Of birth within the Garden's ecstasy.

Pitiful round her face that could not lose

Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn

Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh

Along her loveliness in the white moon.

Then sudden her dream, too cruelly impent

With pain, broke and a cry fled shuddering

Into the wounded stillness from her lips —

As, cold, she fearfully felt for his hand,

And tears, that had before ne'er visited

Her lids with anguish, drew from her the moan:

"Oh, Adam! What have I dreamed?

Now do I understand His words, so dim

To creatures that had quivered but with bliss!

Since at the dusk thy kiss to me, and I

Wept at caresses that were once all joy,

I have slept, seeing through Futurity

The uncreated ages visibly!

Foresuffering phantoms crowded in the womb

Of Time, and all with lamentable mien

Accusing without mercy, thee and me!

And without pity! for tho' some were far

From birth, and without name, others were near —

Sodom and dark Gomorrah – from whose flames

Fleeing one turned … how like her look to mine

When the tree's horror trembled on my taste!

And Babylon upbuilded on our sin;

And Nineveh, a city sinking slow

Under a shroud of sandy centuries

That hid me not from the buried cursing eyes

Of women who e'er-bitterly gave birth!

Ah, to be mother of all misery!

To be first-called out of the earth and fail

For a whole world! To shame maternity

For women evermore – women whose tears

Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away!

To see the wings of Death, as, Adam, thou

Hast not, endlessly beating, and to hear

The swooning ages suffer up to God!

And Oh, that birth-cry of a guiltless child

In it are sounding of our sin and woe,