Her petals cannot fold the wind;
A basin empties from the moon-
In tears of ash and porcelain
And purple reeds that shift too soon
That Lethe stir their memory-
The hemlock fastening its plume
Too quaint without her heraldry;
There was no crest the rose outgrew:
The Corona Borealis
The Coventry its ash withdrew;
Salome writhes her stiffened cheek,
To narrate ghosts she can't exhume;
She fears her dance to fear her blood
Embalmed in stars and broken tombs
The silver cliffs she can't erode;
The azure of their swollen womb,
A shadow that would fasten clay,
A mirror emptied and entombed;
She is not young when winter sleeps-
The frost that wilts as if to bloom
A garden buried from itself-
The amaranth her ghost renewed:
Why sleep and not resisting bows,
When beauty is an interlude?
The wood corroded from her sword,
The opal pasture of its wound.