Nuit Blanche

N

Amy Lowell

I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,

And trumpets make too clamorous a ring

To fit my mood, it is so weary white

I have no wish for doing any thing.

A music coaxed from humming strings would please;

Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences

Across a sunset wall where some Marquise

Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.

Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by

The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet

Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,

Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet

And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.

A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.

A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,

running long fingers down its shining flank.

A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,

Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass.

Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown—

kiss me, red lips, and then pass—pass.

Music, you are pitiless to-night.

And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.

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