Nothing was there to see, A girl half-starved ranting at the sea Where the soulless moonlight pins Heart terrified in agony of sin. 5 Repeated syllables teach her mouth to pray In abstract hatred of the everyday Indigence of things, dull pain of a table Sat at too long or in too deep thought. And now she casts her moonblind eye 10 Upon cracked hills the sea derides With desperate complexities of sound, Lashing furious meanings at the departed ground. It was not her singing sent Drowning blanche mermaids to the tent 15 Of the solid man who mastered them in thought But found their floundering forms were soiled; Nor commanded, in sapphitic fury of a dream Drained among grey stones in lurid streams, The empty apparition of the departed moon 20 Fail and vanish, and hide its scorn. No one living saw her there, Rapturous between null sea and thoughtless air As she, thin-waisted, blind, hypnotized Blank waves of the sea, stark desires of the skies.
From the collection "Burning Byzantium"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.