POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
ARABEL
Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jeweled fingers;
The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room.
Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral
Sit the readers of poems one by one.
And all the room is in shadow except for the blur
Of mahogany surface, and tapers against the wall.
And a youth reads a poem of love—forever and ever
Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings
Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul.
And after a time under the lamp a man
Begins to read a letter, having no poem to read.
And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse
Dampened by rain—it's a dying mind that writes
What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks.
And a sickness enters our hearts: the jeweled hands
Clutch at the arms of the chairs; about the room
One hears the parting of lips, and a nervous shifting
Of feet and arms.
And I look up and over
The reader's shoulder and see the name of the writer.
What is it I see?—the name of a man I knew!
You are an ironical trickster, Time, to bring,
After so many years and into a place like this,
This face before me: hair slicked down and parted
In the middle, and cheeks stuck out with fatness,
[60]
