The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: AABCDDEFEF GHIHEEEEEEEEE JJKLEEEEMMNNONPGPGJJ QRIRRISTRTTUTU GVTVKWTW TTTTTTTTVTKTXEREUYEY EEEXZZBBVA2VRTBTREKE TEEEEEEETEKETKB2TC2C 2T D2D2E2EEE2E2BB TTTTVVEEREE UEUF2F2E2E2TETE TBTET ETVEV TTETE

As evening fallsA
The walls grow luminous and warm the wallsA
Tremble and glow with the lives within them movingB
Moving like music secret and rich and warmC
How shall we live to night where shall we turnD
To what new light or darkness yearnD
A thousand winding stairs lead down before usE
And one by one in myriads we descendF
By lamplit flowered walls long balustradesE
Through half lit halls which reach no endF
-
Take my arm then you or you or youG
And let us walk abroad on the solid airH
Look how the organist's head in silhouetteI
Leans to the lamplit music's orange squareH
The dim globed lamps illumine rows of facesE
Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyesE
They have hurried down from a myriad secret placesE
From windy chambers next to the skiesE
The music comes upon us it shakes the darknessE
It shakes the darkness in our mindsE
And brilliant figures suddenly fill the darknessE
Down the white shaft of light they run through darknessE
And in our hearts a dazzling dream unwindsE
-
Take my hand then walk with meJ
By the slow soundless crashings of a seaJ
Down miles on miles of glistening mirrorlike sand mdashK
Take my handL
And walk with me once more by crumbling wallsE
Up mouldering stairs where grey stemmed ivy clingsE
To hear forgotten bells as evening fallsE
Rippling above us invisibly their slowly widening ringsE
Did you once love me Did you bear a nameM
Did you once stand before me without shameM
Take my hand your face is one I knowN
I loved you long agoN
You are like music long forgotten suddenly come to mindO
You are like spring returned through snowN
Once I know I walked with you in starlightP
And many nights I slept and dreamed of youG
Come let us climb once more these stairs of starlightP
This midnight stream of cloud flung blueG
Music murmurs beneath us like a seaJ
And faints to a ghostly whisper Come with meJ
-
Are you still doubtful of me mdash hesitant stillQ
Fearful perhaps that I may yet rememberR
What you would gladly if you could forgetI
You were unfaithful once you met your loverR
Still in your heart you bear that red eyed emberR
And I was silent mdash you remember my silence yetI
You knew as well as I I could not kill himS
Nor touch him with hot hands nor yet with hateT
No and it was not you I saw with angerR
Instead I rose and beat at steel walled fateT
Cried till I lay exhausted sick unfriendedT
That life so seeming sure and love so certainU
Should loose such tricks be so abruptly endedT
Ring down so suddenly an unlooked for curtainU
-
How could I find it in my heart to hurt youG
You whom this love could hurt much more than IV
No you were pitiful and I gave you pityT
And only hated you when I saw you cryV
We were two dupes if I could give forgiveness mdashK
Had I the right mdash I should forgive you nowW
We were two dupes Come let us walk in starlightT
And feed our griefs we do not break but bowW
-
Take my hand then come with meT
By the white shadowy crashings of a seaT
Look how the long volutes of foam unfoldT
To spread their mottled shimmer along the sandT
Take my handT
Do not remember how these depths are coldT
Nor how when you are deadT
Green leagues of sea will glimmer above your headT
You lean your face upon your hands and cryV
The blown sand whispers about your feetT
Terrible seems it now to die mdashK
Terrible now with life so incompleteT
To turn away from the balconies and the musicX
The sunlit afternoonsE
To hear behind you there a far off laughterR
Lost in a stirring of sand among dry dunesE
Die not sadly you whom life has beatenU
Lift your face up laughing die like a queenY
Take cold flowers of foam in your warm white fingersE
Death's but a change of sky from blue to greenY
-
As evening fallsE
The walls grow luminous and warm the wallsE
Tremble and glow the music breathes upon usE
The rayed white shaft plays over our heads like magicX
And to and fro we move and lean and changeZ
You in a world grown strangeZ
Laugh at a darkness clench your hands despairingB
Smash your glass on a floor no longer caringB
Sink suddenly down and cryV
You hear the applause that greets your latest rivalA2
You are forgotten your rival mdash who knows mdash is IV
I laugh in the warm bright light of answering laughterR
I am inspired and young and though I seeT
You sitting alone there dark with shut eyes cryingB
I bask in the light and in your hate of meT
Failure well the time comes soon or laterR
The night must come and I'll be one who clingsE
Desperately to hold the applause one instant mdashK
To keep some youngster waiting in the wingsE
-
The music changes tone a room is darkenedT
Someone is moving the crack of white light widensE
And all is dark again till suddenly fallsE
A wandering disk of light on floor and wallsE
Winks out returns again climbs and descendsE
Gleams on a clock a glass shrinks back to darknessE
And then at last in the chaos of that placeE
Dazzles like frozen fire on your clear faceE
Well I have found you We have met at lastT
Now you shall not escape me in your eyesE
I see the horrible huddlings of your past mdashK
All you remember blackens utters criesE
Reaches far hands and faint I hold the lightT
Close to your cheek watch the pained pupils shrink mdashK
Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely thinkB2
Now all the hatreds of my life have metT
To hold high carnival we do not speakC2
My fingers find the well loved throat they seekC2
And press and fling you down and then forgetT
-
Who plays for me What sudden drums keep timeD2
To the ecstatic rhythm of my crimeD2
What flute shrills out as moonlight strikes the floorE2
What violin so faintly criesE
Seeing how strangely in the moon he liesE
The room grows dark once moreE2
The crack of white light narrows around the doorE2
And all is silent except a slow complainingB
Of flutes and violins like music waningB
-
Take my hand then walk with meT
By the slow soundless crashings of a seaT
Look how white these shells are on this sandT
Take my handT
And watch the waves run inward from the skyV
Line upon foaming line to plunge and dieV
The music that bound our lives is lost behind usE
Paltry it seems here in this wind swung placeE
Motionless under the sky's vast vault of azureR
We stand in a terror of beauty face to faceE
The dry grass creaks in the wind the blown sand whispersE
-
The soft sand seethes on the dunes the clear grains glistenU
Once they were rock a chaos of golden bouldersE
Now they are blown by the wind we stand and listenU
To the sliding of grain upon timeless grainF2
And feel our lives go past like a whisper of painF2
Have I not seen you have we not met beforeE2
Here on this sun and sea wrecked shoreE2
You shade your sea gray eyes with a sunlit handT
And peer at me far sea gulls in your eyesE
Flash in the sun go down I hear slow sandT
And shrink to nothing beneath blue brilliant skiesE
-
-
-
The music ends The screen grows dark We hurryT
To go our devious secret ways forgettingB
Those many lives We loved we laughed we killedT
We danced in fire we drowned in a whirl of sea wavesE
The flutes are stilled and a thousand dreams are stilledT
-
Whose body have I found beside dark watersE
The cold white body garlanded with sea weedT
Staring with wide eyes at the skyV
I bent my head above it and cried in silenceE
Only the things I dreamed of heard my cryV
-
Once I loved and she I loved was darkenedT
Again I loved and love itself was darkenedT
Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy daysE
The screen at last grows dark the flutes are silentT
The doors of night are closed We go our waysE

Conrad Potter Aiken



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