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The House Of Dust: Part 01: 04: Up High Black Walls, Up Sombre Terraces

Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,

Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,

The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.

From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,

Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.

They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,

Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.

And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,

And some strange shadows threw.

And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,

Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,

From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;

From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:

From some, a dazzling desire.

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,

Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,

Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;

And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death

As she blew out her light.

And there was one who turned from clamoring streets,

And walked in lamplit gardens among black trees,

And looked at the windy sky,

And thought with terror how stones and roots would freeze

And birds in the dead boughs cry . . .

And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain,

To mingle among the crowds again,

To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street;

And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream,

With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet.

And one, from his high bright window looking down

On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,

Hearing a sea-like murmur rise,

Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower,

And drown in waves of shouts and laughter and cries.