HARNESSED EVENINGS

If the threatening, moonlit evening, like a wild, restless spectre of ghosts, should come upon me with its hyena claws, I shall have dipped my broken, pitiful life in a million times in a pitiful shower of true pearls, in vain; it can be neither more cheerful nor happier. For now I flatten myself against the broken, rocky wall of fever, like a huddled, heartless Silence, how the ordinary man-trying existence of the everyday wears my whole inner presence.

I have waited in vain for a loving heart to comfort me, for a romantic sunset, for the redeeming, tender caresses of a sympathetic gesture; for softly lulling words of endearment to caress, to beguile, to soothe, to chase the threatening darkness from my head. Cheap tramp-maid has long been the ragged Life, I should watch and beware, ever suspicious.

If the night should fall upon me like an assassin sneaking through a railway station, or a train's screeching death-scream, I would repay my broken life a million times in vain; it could be neither happier nor more cheerful. For now all are deliberately avoided! Why is it that I dare to delude myself that my troubles and my troubles will come right, and perhaps the One-God may give me another foolish chance! And though my accelerated decades have unexpectedly rolled away Yet now I am forced to bear The scarlet stamp of multiplied disapprovals, As they have been read upon me!