Her vices to her cling.
There's blood that stains her mouth;
Suspense of sense, a sting
On all her body's drouth
Of blood-red colouring.
There's madness in her eyes.
Desire in her feet.
What is this lusts and lies?
Her desires that meet
In rhythm of her feet.
Backward her frame she throws,
Her hands behind her back;
Desire upon her grows;
Her breasts, each a red rose,
Know all her body knows;
Her hair that's raven-black
Follows upon the track
Of all the stars that rise,
Rise with her sterile throes;
And on her face the fire
That wakes in her tiny feet
Excites her with its heat,
Expires in her desire.
She dances like a flame,
A wind-blown wanderer,
As her breasts dance with her;
The roses shed their shame,
A shame that has no name;
Always in her the soul
Cries with her discontent;
Swathed in her Orient scent,
Her soul endures the whole
Of her heart's discontent.
Her limbs insatiable
Dance to the music's strings,
A dwarf arisen from hell
Plays on: such evil things
Draw the nerves out of strings.
And, as her moons advance,
She, moon-like, dares entrance
Hell's covered countenance
With her unholy dance.
Her body quivers, she
Quivers; she turns and turns
On herself furiously;
A fire within her burns
Her flesh inordinately;
Desire within her burns
The flesh over her bones:
She on herself returns
As all her precious stones
Shake, flame, among her zones;
Her desires drown the night
In the body's appetite.
Her sense before her swims,
Her feet scarce touch the ground.
The rhythm of her limbs
As a lost star bedims
The sense of hollow sound
In the dull music drowned.
Rigid her eyes as death.
Rigid her ivory chin,
She swoons upon her breath,
She swoons upon her Sin,
And still her body moves,
The roses fall around;
In the eyes of Herod, loves
Turn hates, and his rings ring
Upon his fingers thin.
Salome, shuddering,
Quivers, and falls a-heap
As a tormented thing;
Her breasts, while throes on throes
Sting her, in fury leap;
She, in her senses' mesh
Feels in her writhing heels
Stings of her naked flesh,
Stings of the locust's heat
Burn on her burning flesh,
She hears a voice that cries
On her Adulteries
Out of an open Pit
Stark on the Infinite,
Heard in the hush of the heat:
She swoons in a senseless sleep.
Now are the torches lit.
Tables are spread for the Feast;
The spokes of Fortune's wheels
Turn in the void of Time.
Herod, hot for his crime.
Drunken and shrunken, reels.
Herodias: There sleeps the Beast.
