Classic Poem

The silent desert refuses to be silent,
Ringing comes out of the air
As bells across the sea.
Is it devils or the mocking laughter
Of our joyless, pretty sisters,
Whom the Holy Ones have cast into hell?
O sisters of men, fountains of life,
Tall Sybils who interpret the morning;
Lamps of the Soul and moulds
Of the generations;
Torch-bearers approaching from the sunrise
In infinite procession, and in infinite procession
Diminishing into the sunset.
O sisters, have you drunk a poisoned cup,
Handed you as a Sacrament?
Why are you so madly merry?
You have drawn curtains between you
And pitying Night.
With lamps you have blotted out the stars.
You have made the stars shiver
With your mad and reckless laughter,
Your mad and reckless songs.
The full moon bears the shadow of a skull and
Against your window and against the night,
The moon showing through his skull, stands Death.
He, too, is laughing, fiddling, singing.
He sings his own relentless song:
The death of your souls and of mine also.
In the endless Past we were one
And in endless Time we shall be one.
You are the absolute moulds of the future.
My sisters there is one waiting for you, unnoticed,
Just around the corner;
His lean fingers play with a shroud;
On his grinning head is a withered wreath.
They call you Daughters of Joy,
But on your pillow, no matter who else rests there,
Lies a dread head with cavernous eyes.
A sharp sword is in your bed;
The sword of the Reaper.
He reaps not your death only, but mine.
Not my death only, but the death of the Race.
The lips of beautiful women have been made poisonous
As the bite of a serpent.
Man's falsities have poisoned the River of Life
Under the very Cliffs of Eternity.