Intermezzo

LET us have music. Play the phonograph.

Put on a record of a racing jazz.

Dance. Move. Sing with the crazy strain.

Dance. Sing. I’m going outside to watch the moon.

The moon is in the east, low in the east.

The nicotiana grows beside the door.

Dance, young singing people,

while I am outside,

watching the moon,

smelling the nicotiana that grows beside the door.

Far in the east,

across the lake, so motionless, so black,

is the bordering forest.

The forest is a fringe of jet around the shimmering silk of the lake.

Above the line of trees is a vast black cloud with an upper fringe of burnished gold—the gold of the rising moon.

I am going outside to watch the moon

and to smell the nicotiana that grows beside the door.

I knew a lady who lived by night—

and soft was the music of long ago—

I knew a lady whose presence was the burnished gold of moonlit clouds,

or the scent of nicotiana—

the flower that opens only at the coming of the moon.

Dance, young singing people.

Dance away your singing youth.

I remember the music of long ago;

and, though time is as black as a moonless murk,

I cannot but remember the lady who lived by night,

like the burnished gold of the clouds,

like the scent of nicotiana.