L’Heautontimoroumenos (1857) (Self-Tormentor)

No rage, no rancor: I shall beat you
As butchers fell an ox
As Moses smote the rock in Horeb—

I shall make you weep
And by the waters of affliction
My desert will be slaked
My desire, that hope has made monstrous
Will frolic in your tears
As a ship tosses on the ocean—
In my besotted heart
Your adorable sobs will echo
Like an ecstatic drum
For I—am I not a dissonance
In the divine accord
Because of the greedy Irony
Which infiltrates my soul?
I hear it in my voice—that shrillness
That poison in my blood!
I am the sinister glass in which
The Fury sees herself!
I am the knife and the wound it deals
I am the slap and the cheek
I am the wheel and the broken limbs
Hangman and victim both!
I am the vampire at my own veins
One of the great lost horde
Doomed for the rest of my time, and beyond
"To laugh—and smile no more"