‘To the Veiled One’

You speak to me as bodiless souls
Speak to the living—-in my sleep.
Your windblown robe flutters and rolls
Like spray blow from the deep.

I, trapped by conquering destiny,
Am seaweed in the boundless shoal;
The darkness wholly covers me,
But fails to quench my soul.

Indeed, my fate is like the ocean,
My inner self is like the shore;
I dwell among the thunder’s roar
And tempest’s blat without emotion.

Exiled, I veil myself from sight;
I ponder, far from earthly howls.
Together with the stars and owls,
I sing the somber song of night.

And in this world of filth and scum
You are a flame like me, no doubt:
For you are soul—-hence troublesome—-
And woman—-hence cast out.

Then, Phantom, let the clouds go by!
O lovely shade, reveal your form,
And be a lighthouse in my storm,
A glimmer in my starless sky!

Hunt for me here among the terns!
Shed on my reef a ray of light;
Adorn with pensive angel-white
My silent deep concerns,

And be a halcyon in splendor
When the great savage waves proceed!
Come down! You must be fair indeed:
Your distant song is tender,

And night itself engenders dawn;
It may be one of heaven’s laws
That my black destiny should cause
Your strange smile to be born.

So, when I roam this dark creation,
We must meet one another’s sight:
You, utterly composed of light,
And I, of obligation!

Far off you speak of love for me;
Remotely in the night you roan
To see the white ghost of my home
By the pale fringes of the sea.

There, pondering beneath the skies
By the sea’s boundless turbulence—-
Marveling as you recognize
That speaks resemble the immense—-

You compare, without knowing me,
Exile to ghost, human to surge,
The lamp that lights my window’s verge
To stars that light infinity!

And, as if in a grave alone,
Onto my fatal brow I feel
The holy kiss of the Ideal
Fall from you, Mouth of the Unknown.

My thoughts, as your breath, seem to be
Impelled to the divine frontier
And quivering with tender fear—-
Leaves of the inward tree.

And yet, it seems, you shun they eye—-
You fear the night, you flee the day;
Joy is a name you deny:
“Love is my name,” you say.

Take one step more! come from the air,
If no decree keeps you apart,
And see my within its lair:
In spirit lion, child in heart;

Come, see me in my desert site,
Alone beneath my roof of fear;
Be angel to cenobite,
Illumination to the seer.

Here in my dross and disrepair
Transform to pearls my drops of sweat;
Come to my somber works, and set
Your radiant finger there!

By the cavernous openings
Of reverie and premonition,
I half perceive the sacred things—-
Complete the apparition!

Come, see the dreamer! even as
He perishes, he grows in light;
Daily within his soul he has
The more of death, the less of night.

Come to my wild obscurity:
Here faith is born, and spirits leave
From here; here, faintly, I perceive
The shadowy forms of destiny.

All is clear to funereal light:
The Lord, to our sad meditation,
Opens within the gloomy night
Steep chasms of illumination.

I feel as if I used to fly
Before I ever came to earth;
I was a lone archangel: my
Catastrophe was birth.

The heavens’ seal is in your hands;
To my once-dovelike soul, descend!
Onto a bird’s corpse, in the end,
A fallen feather sometimes lands.

I hang between two elements—-
That woe I never can evade;
I am a wretched creature, made
Of filth and firmaments.

Such, alas, is human’s doom:
To dream of former finery;
To lose all sense of name; to be
A heaven and a tomb,

To be, beneath the clear blue sky,
A convict doing some base chore;
To bear man’s burden where, before,
I had God’s wings to fly;

To be a child of light above
Yet dirtied by the cemetery,
Dragging material things with me
Even when I cry: “Love”