The Bayadere

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon’s rays

More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid

By the light veils they burned and blushed amid,

Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways,

And there was invitation in her voice

And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes,

As though above the gates of Paradise

Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O’er rugs where mottled blue and green and red

Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom,

Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom,

She floated with delicious arms outspread.

There was no pose she took, no move she made,

But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh

Wrapped round as in the gladiator’s mesh

And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled

Fierce exhalations of hot human love, —

Around her beauty valuable above

The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world;

Flowing as ever like a dancing fire

Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists,

Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists

The nimbus of a thousand hearts’ desire.

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Poems in English 

• Snapshots Of A Daughter In Law by Adrienne Rich
• Shattered Head by Adrienne Rich
• Rural Reflections by Adrienne Rich
• Prospective Immigrants Please Note by Adrienne Rich
• Power by Adrienne Rich
• Planetarium by Adrienne Rich
• Paula Becker To Clara Westhoff by Adrienne Rich
• Our Whole Life by Adrienne Rich
• Orion by Adrienne Rich
• On Edges by Adrienne Rich
• November 1968 by Adrienne Rich
• My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts by Adrienne Rich
• Moving In Winter by Adrienne Rich
• Miracle Ice Cream by Adrienne Rich
• Living In Sin by Adrienne Rich
• Integrity by Adrienne Rich
• In Those Years by Adrienne Rich
• In The Evening by Adrienne Rich
• In A Classroom by Adrienne Rich
• Implosions by Adrienne Rich

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