Page:Words for the Chisel (1926).pdf/20

Who kept this place, said someone half aloud.
She turned her back and muttered with a frown,
They took her with her pipe away,
The crowd Moved off behind. Enormous night came down
And made a ruby of the tropic town
And heaped the sea upon the open shore—
And no one saw the woman any more.

The hollow lantern hung like a fat spider
With four words in Chinese, lettered dull red,
The door was creaking in, opening wider,
You saw a crooked stool, an iron bed,
Old canisters of tea and chunks of bread. . .
The moon slipped past the window like a ghost—
And touched the pink-nosed Buddha on the post.

Eric had brought the Buddha from Japan.
He laid it on the table, near, for her.
She took it shyly up. The color ran
Into her lips. The saw how red they were.
The carving smelt of sandal-wood and myrrh;
She laughed and kissed it. Eric waiting, grim,
Was thinking how her body suited him.

She was the eeriest woman anywhere
On the Pacific, or Pacific shores;—
So fragile and so savage, with the stare
Of delicate deer halted on all fours . . .
Lehua ran with laughter from the snores
Of all the heavy white-men who had found
Smoke more substantial than her singing sound.

She had come down from the valleys very young
Just sixteen—lodged with friends who kept a house