Cento

The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.

My enemy had bidden me as guest.

How he would place his hand beside his ear,

O where are you going? Stay with me here!

The clouds cast moving shadows on the land. 

I fly to thee, and fully understand

No genuine insight ever comes to her. 

I am the lost heart of a murderer

The daughter, with hands outstretched to the fire

And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire;

How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.

So through that unripe day you bore your head,

Impinging on the slow shores of the dead. 

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Like life and fear, a dark reality. 

Your body that includes everything

Are you prepared for what the night will bring? 

Love paired ascends as beating wings in flight –

proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night

All things recall one heart-sick memory;-

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Buds of invention many a hundred year,

Gleam delicately through the azure clear;  

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

We too eat and grow fat, you aren’t content,

When I walk out, I am a great event. 

You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;

The debts of our penurious bankrupt age;

But you are you, Time is not yours alone,

I can reduce all feelings but this one.

If hands could free you, heart, where would you fly? 

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by, 

Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath. 

Is this my lover then?  This death, this death? 

The still, sad music of humanity, 

So much for art.  So much for prophecy.