When the Leaves Come Out/Respectability
RESPECTABILITY
You whitened sepulchre of Christian grace;
You saintly, honored, holy—hideous thing!
You smother Truth with raucous gibbering;
You hide your rotting sores with silk and lace;
You lavish loathsome gifts of gold and place
On whorish fools who praise you as their king—
Who crucify your foes while church-bells ring . . .
But blest be they who spit into your face!
Go, girt yourself with your dull panoply.
Make sharp with thorns the paths men ravel in.
Upraise your blood-cry with internal din—
You Larva of the Past, but, ah, for me,
How better far to live with leprous sin
Than reek and rot with your innanity!