years of hard plowing in quack-grass, while batting At poisonous flies and stepping on poisonous snakes ... How well did you know that life to a genius, a god, Is naught but a farce! How well did you look with those eyes As black as a beetle's through all the ridiculous show:      Ridiculous war, and ridiculous strife, and ridiculous pomp. Ridiculous dignity, riches, rituals, reasons and creeds. Ridiculous guesses at what the great Silence is saying. Ridiculous systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. So you smiled till the lines of your mouth A crescent became with dimples for horns, so expressing To centuries after who see you in marble: Behold me, I lived, I loved, I laughed, I toiled without ceasing Through eighty-four years for realities—O let them pass, Let life go by. Would you rise over death like a god? Front the ages with a smile! 

  

  

       POOR PIERROT     

      Here far away from the city, here by the yellow dunes I will lie and soothe my heart where the sea croons. For what can I do with strife, or what can I do with hate? Or the city, or life, or fame, or love or fate? Or the struggle since time began of the rich and poor? Or the law that drives the weak from the temple's door? Bury me under the sand so that my sorrow shall lie Hidden under the dunes from the world's eye. I have learned the secret of silence, silence long and deep:      The dead knew all that I know, that is why they sleep. They could do nothing with fate, or love, or fame, or strife—      When life fills full the soul then life kills life. I would glide under the earth as a shadow over a dune, Into the soul of silence, under the sun and moon. And forever as long as the world stands or the stars flee Be one with the sands of the shore and one with the sea. 

  

  

       MIRAGE OF THE DESERT     

      Well, there's the brazier set by the temple door:      Blue flames run over the coals and flicker through. There are cool spaces of sky between white clouds—      But what are flames and spaces but eyes of blue? 

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