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THE PURPLE MANDARIN
Published in the International New York, New York, U.S.A. (page 268)
There is a purple mandarin With mystic madness in his eyes; He hath deflowered the virgin Sin, And she hath made him overwise. He eats, he drinks, he sleeps, he sports: He never speaks his thoughts.
Well knoweth he the Way of Phang, Matching the Yang against the Yin; He marketh Tao in God and dung, Seeth the secret—“soul is skin.” With power and sight behind his will He chooseth to keep still.
For he hath dreamed: A blossom buds Once in a million million years, One poppy on Time’s foamless floods, A cup of cruelty and tears. Its heart secretes a sacred gum —Man’s only opium.
O mystic flower! O midnight flower Chaste and corrupt as patchouli! A silver saint—a porcelain tower— A flame of ice—a silken sea— A taint—a vice—a swoon—a shame— Pure Beauty is thy name!
I sought thee in Sahara’s sand, Hunted through Himalayan snows; Gods led me friendly by the hand— Me blind! where every soul-wind blows. I was more foolish than my kin, The purple mandarin.
He dreamed—I followed. Then the Gods Who mock at Wisdom spun the wheel, Reversed the incalculable odds And flung out laughing—flint to steel— The one impossible event: Pure Beauty came—and went.
Come back to me, my opium-flower, Chaste and corrupt, my saint of sin, My flame of ice, my porcelain tower —I hate the purple mandarin Who gurgles at me in his fall: “Dream’s wiser, after all.” |