NOT every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad
Michaelmas.
Bavarian
gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the day-time torch-like with the
smoking blueness
of
Pluto’s gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread
blue
down flattening
into points, flattened under the sweep of
white day
torch-flower of the
blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of
Dio, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s
pale lamps
give off
light,
lead me then,
lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the
blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is
darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the
frosted
September
to the
sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a
voice
or a darkness
invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the
passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness,
shedding darkness
on
the lost bride and her groom.