Classic Poem

You have come on me like a head streaming fire in the November blackness,
Comet of madness and miracle,
Out of the Deeps, the Deeps beyond the stars ...

They knew you, O dancer with the flaming scarf,
Spangling Assyrian midnight ... cymbals clashed, anklets tinkled ...
You burned with beauty into the souls of men ...

The Nile knew you as you walked in the courts of your massive home,
O slender and large-eyed maiden,
A tiger at your right hand, and a leopard at your left ...

In the houses of the prostitutes you sat in the dusk, listening to camel-bells, —
Dark Arabs came to devour your young body ...

Were you not the prone Magdalen at the feet of Jesus,
And when you passed into healing was Jesus not you,
And you the clear-eyed Christ?

Maid of Orleans, I see you sitting your black charger,
In shining armour and pure of face ...

Maid of Verona, I see you leaning to your lover in the moon-knifed shadows ...
Your long hair falls shining down your breasts and he climbs to press his lips to the shining ...

What garden have I seen you running in, a slip of a girl,
Shouting at play, and tossing plums at your fleeing brother?

Among the maskers, you leap and dance and you sing,
O light-footed!

And now you are tiger-woman, come to devour the souls of men ...
And now you curl weeping at your lover's feet, wrenched through all your loveliness with despairing desire ...

O baleful one, O beautiful, what are you, coming upon me like a head streaming fire?
Comet, what are you?

Is it my soul, dripping monstrous and miraculous out of the depths?
Is it thus souls are born?