WHILE MY HEART WAS IN THE SKIES
I SAT, and while my heart was in the skies
I wrote my love ; The sun in me was myriad disguise And the words were warm with my happiness.
Caught in the beauty of a crimson cloud I wrote, my love, The page with heart's blood crimson was endowed, With gold and opals, tears and sunlight glowed.
Sun and moonlight into dusk decayed, I wrote my love ; The moonlight poured, a shimmering cascade Lay gilt upon the landscape's pale brocade. * * * *
I slept, I woke, tomorrow was today—
I read my love.
The wind and rain had made the garden grey, Grey grave of a lovely harmony.
Where 'mellowed tan and moonlit rose Illumed my love ; With silver sleet and golden snows Stardust and muscadine that blows, Where, in a mist, a mosque of coralline Enshrined my love, And peacock's feathers' oriental shine Blurred in a pool of breathless anodyne Traced on the midnight velvet of the pond Jewel of my love, A silver aureole around a saffron frond, Divinely lighted, radiantly blond.
Gleam of the eyes of an owl in the gloom
Suggests, my love, That in ihe dark magenta lilies bloom, Like blood congealing in a royal tomb. * * * * It rains and rains, grey sheets of mucid slime Cold to my love, The muezzins Of Arabia dimly climb Across the purple plains of present time.
Dreams die, and loneliness is like a cloud ; I read my love—
The page with heart's blood crimson was endowed, Which heart is dry now and which head is bowed.
Fantastic palace of the gorgeous East! Sad for my love And for that dead Arabia, self-confessed Gossamer, faery-tales and amethyst!
DIANA jAME S
[The writer of this poem is aged fifteen]
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