A night, under the moon of choler

That bled amidst the fogs of pink,

You spoke, o sister, of sad things

Like an infant seized with rancor.

Far from bad men and their appeals

We climbed the orchards of the plain

Where the trees twisted by hate

Held out, fruits of ill love, their apples.

You heard not the sound of wheels

Returning to the small villages

The harvest of the reapers sage

Who labor while you spin your wheels.

You gathered poppies on the way

To festoon, full your soft hands,

Our house where one sees the mad

Begging, sisters of doubt and dismay.

As if before a strange inn

You made, vocalist of disasters,

The sign that withers the good stars

In the blue garden of the Virgin.

Then stripping there upon the doorsill

The flowers of darkness one by one,

You sang something to the Moon,

Something of which my soul is killed.

Stuart Merrill