Subtleties open and close, pleated, like a fan,
If twice more delicate,
Open and close, like an eyelid, meaningful,
So softly desolate.
Like a fan, an eyelid, or like an obdurate smile;
Only the blind can see
What darkness grows, its quivering plant life,
Its ambiguity.
So soon the suns go down, the candles lighted.
How will the splendor darken?
Darkness will come, the smile blaze splendidly
The travelers embark
For thrilling journeys. But in the candle-crested
Room, remote, obscurely,
Voyages through the web-gone banal beauty—thought
Burns cold, burns purely
Ah, but in the dark outside. There vast boughs climb
Greenly to the sky,
The scarlet parrot sleeps in the bough’s green shoulder,
The visions multiply
And small where the candle fiickers its arid tongue,
The sad smiles bewilder,
Smaller the speaking eyelid’s cryptic gesture,
The subtlety grows colder.
Until in the room is disembodiment,
Flagellant, fatal words,
Defeat like a crystal death. But the dark is breathing:
Sing! hot-throated bird.
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