My brain is like a tropical forest, dark and sinister,
In whose branches and hedges thoughts dart and play like scarlet scarabees;
Or, sometimes, like a sea of phosphorescent light
In which images sport like flying fish.
A garden, too, wherein walk sadic Christs and Neros that are Paraclete,
Which on a sudden changes into a seraglio peopled with scarlet angels
Who choir their prayers of passion to a cataleptic Sultan.
In fortunate hours it is like a chariot made of sun-motes
Drawn by two great butterflies caught by Titans of the Moon,
And it carries me past the sparkling sweat-beads on the face of the celestial Ethiope
And the sorrows of the multi-millioned creatures who pullulate in their depths
To the solemn solitudes of the Nirvana of fairies who drowse forever on the Golden Thigh of Pythagoras.
[244]
My brain! my brain! ’Tis star-exiled from space
And sent to the Siberia of my skull without reprieve;
A stomach that I shall one day disembowel,
Whose spillings shall become beautiful words and shall dance and dance away!
Source: Others, May – June 1916 (Vol. II, Nos. 5 and 6), pp. 243 – 244