| |
| YOU ruffled black blossom, | |
| You glossy dark wind. | |
| |
| Your sort of gorgeousness, | |
| Dark and lustrous | |
| And unfathomable | 5 |
| And poppy-glossy, | |
| Is the gorgeousness that evokes my darkest admiration. | |
| |
| Your aboriginality, | |
| Deep, unexplained, | |
| Like a Red Indian darkly sumptuous and aloof, | 10 |
| Seems like the black and glossy seeds of wonderful centuries. | |
| |
| Your wattles are the color of steel which has been red hot | |
| And is going cold, | |
| Cooling to a powdery pale-oxidized sky-blue. | |
| |
| Why do you have wattles, and a naked wattled head? | 15 |
| Why do you arch your naked-set eye with a more than comprehensible haughtiness? | |
| |
| The vulture is bald; so is the condor, obscenely; | |
| But only you have thrown this amazing mantilla of oxidized sky-blue | |
| And hot red over you: | |
| This queer fine shawl of blue and vermilion, | 20 |
| Whereas the peacock has a diadem. | |
| |
| I wonder why. | |
| Perhaps it is a sort of Spanish discretion, a veil; | |
| Perhaps it is your reserve, in all this ostentation. | |
| Your wattles drip down like a shawl to your breast, | 25 |
| And the point of your mantilla drops across your nose. | |
| |
| Some races veil the head, | |
| And some put flowers in the hair, to attract attention. | |
| |
| Or perhaps there is something in your wattles of a bull’s dew-lap, | |
| Which slips down like a pendulum to balance the throbbing mass of a generous breast, | 30 |
| The over-drip of a great passion hanging in the balance. | |
| |
| You contract yourself; | |
| You arch yourself as an archer’s bow, | |
| Which quivers indrawn as you clench your spine, | |
| Until your veiled head almost touches backward | 35 |
| To the root-rising of your erected tail; | |
| And one intense and backward-curving frisson | |
| Seizes you as you clench yourself together | |
| Like some fierce magnet bringing its poles together. | |
| |
| Burning, pale positive pole of your wattled head! | 40 |
| And from the darkness of that opposite one | |
| The upstart of your round-barred, sun-round tail! | |
| Whilst between the two, along the tense arched curve of your back, | |
| Blows the magnetic current in fierce blasts, | |
| Ruffling black shining feathers like lifted mail, | 45 |
| Shuddering storm wind, or a water rushing through. | |
| |
| Your august super-sensual haughtiness | |
| Tosses the crape of red across your brow and down your breast | |
| As you draw yourself upon yourself in pride. | |
| |
| It is a declaration of such tension in pride | 50 |
| As Time has not dared to avouch, nor eternity been unable to unbend, | |
| Do what it may. | |
| |
| The peacock lifts his rods of bronze | |
| And struts blue-brilliant out of the far East; | |
| But watch a turkey prancing low on earth, | 55 |
| Drumming his vaulted wings as savages drum | |
| Their rhythms on long-drawn hollow sinister drums— | |
| The ponderous sombre sound of the great drum of Huichilobos | |
| In pyramid Mexico, during sacrifice. | |
| Drum, and the turkey onrush, | 60 |
| Sudden demoniac dauntlessness, full abreast, | |
| All the bronze gloss of all his myriad petals | |
| Each one apart and instant. | |
| Delicate frail crescent of the gentle outline of white | |
| At each feather-tip, | 65 |
| So delicate; | |
| Yet the bronze wind-bell suddenly clashing, | |
| And the eye over-weening into madness. | |
| |
| Turkey-cock, turkey-cock, | |
| Are you the bird of the next dawn? | 70 |
| |
| Has the peacock had his day, does he call in vain, screecher, for the sun to rise? | |
| The eagle, the dove, and the barnyard shouter, do they call in vain, trying to wake the morrow? | |
| And do you await us, wattled father, Westward? | |
| Will your yell do it? | |
| |
| Take up the trail of the vanished American | 75 |
| Where it disappeared at the foot of the crucifix. | |
| Take up the primordial pride, | |
| The more than human, dense magnificence, | |
| And disdain, and indifference, and onrush; and pry open the new day with them. | |
| |
| Is the East a dead letter, and Europe moribund? | 80 |
| But those sumptuous, dead, feather-lustrous Aztecs, Amerindians, | |
| In all the sombre splendor of their red blood, | |
| Stand under the dawn, half-godly, awaiting the cry of the turkey-cock? | |
| |
