Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/145

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

FRAGMENTS OF "THE UNICORN"

I will go now; prepare our evening meal;
And waken my husband, my love once.

Nubian

[Musing.] The lightning of the heavens
Lifts an apocalypse:
The dumb night's lips are scared and wide,
The world is reeling with sound:
Was I deaf before, mute, tied?
What shakes here from lustre-seeded pomegranates
Not in the great world,
More vast and terrible?
What is this ecstasy in form,
This lightning
That found the lightning in my blood,
Searing my spirit's lips aghast and naked?
I am flung in the abyss of days,
And the void is filled with rushing sound
From pent eternities:
I am strewn as the cypher is strewn.
A woman—a soft woman!
Our girls have hair
Like heights of night ringing with never-seen larks,
Or blindness dim with dreams:
Here is a yellow tiger gay that blinds your night,
Mane—Mane—Mane!

127