NOT every man has gentians in his house
In soft September, at slow, sad
Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, tall and dark, but dark
Darkening the day-time
torch-like with the smoking blueness
of Pluto’s gloom,
Ribbed hellish flowers erect, with their blaze
of darkness
spread
blue
Blown into
points, by the heavy white draught of the
day.
Torch-flowers of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark
blue blaze
Black
lamps from the halls of Dio, smoking dark blue
Giving off darkness, blue
darkness, upon Demeter’s yellow-pale day
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
Let me guide myself with the
blue, forked torch of a flower
Down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is
darkened on blueness
Down the way Persephone goes, just now, in
first-frosted
September
To the
sightless realm where darkness is married to dark
And Persephone herself is but a
voice, as a bride
A
gloom invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
Of the arms of Pluto as he
ravishes her once again
And pierces her once more with his passion of
the utter dark.
Among the splendour of black-blue torches, shedding
fathom —
less darkness on the nuptials.
Give me a flower on a tall stem, and three dark
flames,
For I will
go to the wedding, and be wedding-guest
At the marriage of the living
dark.