The Dinner-Party
Fish
“So…” they said,With their wine-glasses delicately poised,Mocking at the thing they cannot understand.“So…” they said again,Amused and insolent.The silver on the table glittered,And the red wine in the glassesSeemed the blood I had wastedIn a foolish cause.
Game
The gentleman with the grey-and-black whiskersSneered languidly over his quail.Then my heart flew up and laboured,And I burst from my own holdingAnd hurled myself forward.With straight blows I beat upon him,Furiously, with red-hot anger, I thrust against him.But my weapon slithered over his polished surface,And I recoiled upon myself,Panting.
Drawing-Room
In a dress all softness and half-tones,Indolent and half-reclined,She lay upon a couch,With the firelight reflected in her jewels.But her eyes had no reflection,They swam in a grey smoke,The smoke of smouldering ashes,The smoke of her cindered heart.
Coffee
They sat in a circle with their coffee-cups.One dropped in a lump of sugar,One stirred with a spoon.I saw them as a circle of ghostsSipping blackness out of beautiful china,And mildly protesting against my coarsenessIn being alive.
Talk
They took dead men’s soulsAnd pinned them on their breasts for ornament;Their cuff-links and tiarasWere gems dug from a grave;They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts;And I took a green liqueur from a servantSo that he might come near meAnd give me the comfort of a living thing.
Eleven O’Clock
The front door was hard and heavy,It shut behind me on the house of ghosts.I flattened my feet on the pavementTo feel it solid under me;I ran my hand along the railingsAnd shook them,And pressed their pointed barsInto my palms.The hurt of it reassured me,And I did it again and againUntil they were bruised.When I woke in the nightI laughed to find them aching,For only living flesh can suffer.