FEVER‑GARDEN

I

Red living flakes of demon snow

        Poison‑relate the sinning air

To atom‑clear red sick flowers who

        Rootless jut out of Night and There

Relation being itself a clutch

        Upon the throbbing veins in seeing

So the surviving over‑much

        Is not contiguous to being

Yet philter‑aureole or lay

        Sung round the rites of altared vice

The poppies of o'er‑memory may

        Spin cobweb‑circles lusting thrice

Around the phallic selfness stood

        Midway from intellect to sense

Round whose void a tongued mist thrust‑dense

        To the cut lips gives conscious blood

II

She the despised communion owes

        To vice of tainting holy things

And making eucharists of throes

        When lust thickens with pin‑soft wings

For her mouth red till purple is black

        Supplies a space in the lost rites

And intermits our heart‑beats' track

        Senseward to demon infinites

Till on the point of the spasm cast

        Like a mantle on consciousness

The veil is rent in temple waste

        And the tongue‑flowers remouth from Space