I prize the memory of naked ages when
Apollo relished gilding marble limbs
whose agile-fleshed originals achieved

Two warriors have engaged in combat: swords
Hash and clash together; blood is spilled.
Such passages of arms are the result

Remember, my soul, the thing we saw
  that lovely summer day?
On a pile of stones where the path turned off,

It is a terrible terrain
   no mortal eye has seen
whose image still seduces me

Behave, my Sorrow! let’s have no more scenes.
Evening’s what you wanted—Evening’s here:
a gradual darkness overtakes the town,

Once, indulgent lady—only once
  you lay your lustrous arm
on mine (against the darkness of my soul

Worshipped once, discreetly, by our sires
as Cynthia, the lamp of secret haunts,
and still attended through blue landscapes by

Ecstatic fleece that ripples to your nape
and reeks of negligence in every curl!
To people my dim cubicle tonight

Pascal had his abyss, it followed him.
But the abyss is All—action and dream,
language, desire!—and who could count the times

Dreams come now, bad dreams, and teenage boys
burrow into their pillows. Now the lamp
that glowed at midnight seems, like a bloodshot eye,