The Ape

The trees dream all night on the tops of the hills,
The ghostly water a dark hollow fills,
Its long white shadow falling through the trees
Where the Ape squats silent, his hands on his knees.

The white shadow shines in that small dim mind;
The Moon travels there; the star-hordes wind
With pin-head lamps through the dark, dark blue
Where faint cloud-like thoughts collect and pursue.

The scent of the forest, the rippling streams;
The butterflies flitting through the shaking tree-dreams;
The twittering of birds, the roar of a lion;
In the pale morning sky fading Orion.

I see and I hear, I awake in the night,
And the Asian forests are dark in my sight,
With slow bright patches on the drifting gloom,
Where Stars, Sun and Moon soundlessly bloom.

The Sun hangs low, a great dim flower,
A bloom without stalk; and hour by hour
The sharp cries of birds and the shrieks of the slain
Are tearing the quiet with bright gashes of pain:

And that Flower bleeds out, wildly staining the sky;
And the lions roar to see the day-flower die—
They roar together on the tops of the hills
While with little pale blossoms the dark sky fills.

In the gloom under heaven, clasping my knees—
That long white shadow still falling through the trees,
The lions roaring their music in my brain—
Alone on that boulder I am sitting once again.