Full Moon
My bands of silk and miniver Momently grew heavier; The black gauze was beggarly thin; The ermine muffled mouth and chin; I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozenges Of love and hate, I walked in these Striped and ragged rigmaroles; Along the pavement my footsoles Trod warily on living coals. Shouldering the thoughts I loathed, In their corrupt disguises clothed, Morality I could not tear From my ribs, to leave them bare Ivory in silver air. There I walked, and there I raged; The spiritual savage caged Within my skeleton, raged afresh To feel, behind a carnal mesh, The clean bones crying in the flesh.
Elinor Wylie’s other poems:
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