Classic Poem

Your eyes dazzle: shut your eyelids lightly
On them; your eyes glow: they are green coal
Now, with a wind moving under them slightly,
And like a twitching mendicant my soul
Shivers before you, stripped, stark naked. . . . Shut
Your eyes, for love of God! Iron — ice —
Would burn! I am mere paper! And you cut
As fire through dust, flame through the sacrifice!

I will not be your moth, your rich dull umber
Drift of scorched wings, or your sapphire bird
Stabbing at glass! ... Let a long pansied slumber
Velvet your lids, your dazzling eyes grow blurred
With anguish of their Egypt dusk, your lids
Curve to the stillness of the pyramids!