Distress

I don't come to conquer your flesh tonight

O beast!

In whom are the sins of the race, nor to stir

in your foul tresses a mournful tempest

beneath the fatal boredom my kisses pour.

A heavy sleep without those dreams that creep

under curtains alien to remorse, i ask of your bed.

Sleep you can savour after your dark deceits,

you who know more of Nothingness than the dead.

For Vice, gnawing this inborn nobleness of mine

marked me, like you, with its sterility

but shroud-haunted, pale, destroyed, I flee.

While that heart no tooth of any crime

Can wound lives in your breast of stone

Frightened of dying while I sleep alone