Fine the wine that loves us,
Good in the oven hot bread,
So the woman, our succubus,
Who brings pleasure to bed.
But what to make of dusk, rose
In a sky growing chill?
What can eternal verse disclose
About ethereal still?
We cannot eat or drink or kiss
Our words. The instant flees unchecked.
We wring our hands but miss and miss
Again each mark we select.
Like a boy forgets his play
To spy on bathing girls:
Though innocent, he falls prey
To love’s mysterious whirls;
Or a creature come from slime
In a thicket sets to howling
Out of impotence at the crime
Of shoulder burgeoning to wing;
So from age to age — O God, soon! —
Art and nature’s knife invents
To spirit’s cry and flesh’s swoon
A new organ for the Sixth Sense.
After Nikolai Gumiliev