Gift of the Poem

I bring to you the child of an Idumean night!

Black, with bloody wing and pale, unfeathered quite,

Through the glass burned with seasonings and gold,

Through the frozen panes, alas! drear as of old,

Sunup threw itself upon the lamp angelic.

Palms! and when it had displayed that very relic

To that father trying on an enemy smile,

Solitude most blue shuddered and most sterile.

O cradler, with your daughter and the innocence

Of your cold feet, take unto you a birth offensive:

And your voice recalling viol and harpsichord,

With a pallid finger will you squeeze the gourd

Whence flows woman in sibylline whiteness as of stars

For those lips which the air of virgin azure starves?

Stéphane Mallarmé