W. Dennis Hinde

To a Geisha (1937)

How memorable is that
night
of the bland heathen
moon,
at which I bowed
before bed!

You smiled, I remember, and
said
I know not what of beautiful,
reminding me, O goldenly!
with round, red-blossomed
whispering lips
and smooth, smooth skin,
of a tree,
my monkey-slip!

At which, O all your sweet,
sweet face
up-dawned with surprise,
and lo! the light of laughter
broke out of your eyes.

How puzzled you grew,
my Yokohama chit,
laughing pert and light,
when
from outside in the dead
drowse of the cool, mooned
night
woke discord, by chance, and
song,
and noise of busy work
that was to last the whole night
long
till the cocks should crow:

A tawny wail of youths
and noise of their thudding
pestles
as they husked hard barley
out there in the cool, cool
night.

How dear dare I hold you?—
I shall never quit you,
nor this quiet rural inn
of the fragrant persimmons:
not for the Son of Heaven,
no, not for all the Emperors in
Peking.

But soft:
see how charméd night
makes of your every movement,
makes every pass of yours
a ritual,
a mystic ritual of love
down-handed from the ages,
when
we unborn clay were—
wares of porcelain in a
house
in China,
translucent, pure, beflowered . . .

My yellow cotton flower
with the dark amber eye,
how memorable was that night!

‘To a Geisha’ appeared in Poetry Review 28 (1937), p. 456.