Classic Poem

Like a golden storm
That has blown me bodily through eternal days
Love came, song-circled and star-windy ...

But now?
I stand in the clear hard afternoon, and I am one
Remembering madness ... searching the west for the gone glory ...

Where am I now, alone?
And where is Golden Bird?
And where the abyss of vision, and the plighting, and immortal promises?
Where are those moments when death seemed conquered
And we dreamed our love everlasting?

O love, O love,
Is this all that thou art?
A lightning-opening of heavens, music flashed through the night, a cry, a sigh — nothing more?

I call you " Golden Bird!"
I call and call you through the still afternoon: " Golden Bird!
Wing back from the sky's shining and rain your melodious madness on my parched spirit,
Make me insane again with lunatic love ..."
O there is no joy in life, but to be mad ...
To be beauty's slave, till the streets are a silver smoke whisked down echoing alleys of chaos,
And we are angel and demon puffing on golden trumpets among the dancing towers,
And the sea is a wash of gods, billowing shouts of immortals ...

When I was bewitched with the long wonder of your careless hair,
When I laughed and wept like a waterfall among the thundering mountains,
When I knelt like a lost soul in the pit before my star in the two-wing'd night,
When wizardry of a kiss brought hot flash of a reborn seraph,
Then I lived, then, drunken and divine, I shared with gods
Creation's infinite golden energy,
Creation's careless fling and scatter of scarf'd stars in mighty night ...

Magic of song!
Already the stupor and glory mount and sing in my blood,
And I think tonight
We shall eternize love,
Immortalizing the perishing ...