Sonnet

Make visible music, oh my heart make
great with song one hour, one sweet time
mine. Make merry with wind and break
if must, if may; but make one rhyme
dearer than rest, nearer the hour that was
love. Then, if must, hear the carnal drums
calling the issues of transpontine wars—
the time that rouses, reaches, comes
baring its teeth. But yet awhile
is the hour for the flower to smile,
for the word be near the heart of matter.
Whatever may happen to bleed, scatter
one light, song, make one moment right
before love bleeds and falls the war-locked night.

——In Everyman's Past——

These are the eyes I mostly would avoid
out of the avalanching streets, remind
of a strange music, my own self's song,
echoes from them and all I long
to be that I am not: a moment's eternity
issues from them but nothing of it for me.

These must be the eyes I waken for
from a terrible closed sleep to find
only the cold walls, and the awe
of the self's breath. The designed
dreams are not the ones to rapture. The forbidden
echoes are those most of love, most hidden.

And you, my secret life, a dream ago
have written such words in a book that no
heart may breath safe again after, no dream
entertain the wish and sane remain but scream
its hidden truth to paralyse night and want
feeling those eyes forever again in streets that deny and haunt.

—Louis Johnson.