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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
The Altar of Heaven
Beneath the leaning, rain-washed sky this great white
circle–beautiful!
In three white terraces the circle lies, piled one on
one toward Heaven. And on each terrace the
white balustrade climbs in aspiring marble, etched
in cloud.
And Heaven is very near.
For this is worship native as the air, wide as the
wind, and poignant as the rain,
Pure aspiration, the eternal dream.
Beneath the leaning sky this great white circle!
(Peking)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
The Beggar
“Christ! What is that–that–Thing?
Only a beggar, professionally maimed, I think.”
Across the narrow street it lies, the street where little
children are.
It is rocking its body back and forth, back and forth,
ingratiatingly, in the noisome filth.
Beside the body are stretched two naked stumps of
flesh, on one the remnant of a foot. The wounds
are not new wounds, but they are open and they
fester. There are flies on them.
The Thing is whining, shrilly, hideously.
“Professionally maimed, I think.”
Christ!
(Hwai Yuen)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
Woman
Strangely the sight of you moves me.
I have no standard by which to appraise you; the outer
shell of you is all I know.
Yet irresistibly you draw me.
Your small plump body is closely clad in blue brocaded
satin. The fit is scrupulous, yet no woman’s figure
is revealed. You are decorously shapeless.
Your satin trousers even are lined with fur.
Your hair is stiff and lustrous as polished ebony, bound
at the neck in an adamantine knot, in which dull
pearls are encrusted.
Your face is young and round and inscrutably alien.
Your complexion is exquisite, matte gold over-lying
blush pink, textured like ripe fruit.
Your nose is flat, the perfect nose of China.
Your eyes–your eyes are witchery!
The blank curtain of your upper lid droops sharply on
the iris, and when you smile the corners twinkle
upward.
It is your eyes, I think, that move me.
They are so bright, so black!
They are alert and full of curiosity as the eyes of a
squirrel, and like the eyes of a squirrel they have
no depth behind them.
They are windows opening on a world as small as your
bound feet, a world of ignorances, and vacuities,
and kitchen-gods.
And yet your eyes are witchery. When you smile you
are the woman-spirit, adorable.
I cannot appraise you, yet strangely the sight of you
moves me.
I believe that I shall dream of you.
(Pa-tze-kiao)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
The Hand
As you sit so, in the firelight, your hand is the color of
new bronze.
I cannot take my eyes from your hand;
In it, as in a microcosm, the vast and shadowy Orient
is made visible.
Who shall read me your hand?
You are a large man, yet it is small and narrow, like the
hand of a woman and the paw of a chimpanzee.
It is supple and boneless as the hands wrought in pigment
by a fashionable portrait painter. The tapering
fingers bend backward.
Between them burns a scented cigarette. You poise it
with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the
eyes of her lover. The long line of your curved
nail is fastidiousness made flesh.
Very skilful is your hand.
With a tiny brush it can feather lines of ineffable suggestion,
glints of hidden beauty. With a little
tool it can carve strange dreams in ivory and
milky jade.
And cruel is your hand.
With the same cold daintiness and skill it can devise
exquisite tortures, eternities of incredible pain,
that Torquemada never glimpsed.
And voluptuous is your hand, nice in its sense of touch.
Delicately it can caress a quivering skin, softly it can
glide over golden thighs…. Bilitis had not
such long nails.
Who can read me your hand?
In the firelight the smoke curls up fantastically from
the cigarette between your fingers which are the
color of new bronze.
The room is full of strange shadows.
I am afraid of your hand….
(From The Interior)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
The Dandy
He swaggers in green silk and his two coats are lined
with fur. Above his velvet shoes his trim, bound
ankles twinkle pleasantly.
His nails are of the longest.
Quite the glass of fashion is Mr. Chu!
In one slim hand–the ultimate punctilio–dangles
a bamboo cage, wherein a small brown bird sits
with a face of perpetual surprise.
Mr. Chu smiles the benevolent smile of one who satisfies
both fashion and a tender heart.
Does not a bird need an airing?
(Wusih)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
The Camels
Whence do you come, and whither make return, you
silent padding beasts?
Over the mountain passes; through the Great Wall; to
Kalgan–and beyond, whither?…
Here in the city you are alien, even as I am alien.
Your sidling jaw, your pendulous neck–incredible–and
that slow smile about your eyes and lip,
these are not of this land.
About you some far sense of mystery, some tawny
charm, hangs ever.
Silently, with the dignity of the desert, your caravans
move among the hurrying hordes, remote and
slowly smiling.
But whence are you, and whither do you make return?
Over the mountain passes; through the Great Wall; to
Kalgan–and beyond, whither?…
(Peking)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Eunice Tietjens
(1884 – 1944)
On the Canton River Boat
Up and down, up and down, paces the sentry.
He is dressed in a uniform of khaki and his socks are
green. Over his shoulder is slung a rifle, and
from his belt hang a pistol and cartridge pouch.
He is, I think, Malay and Chinese mixed.
Behind him the rocky islands, hazed in blue, the yellow
sun-drenched water, the tropic shore, pass as a
background in a dream.
He only is sweltering reality.
Yet he is here to guard against a nightmare, an
anachronism, something that I cannot grasp.
He is guarding me from pirates.
Piracy! The very name is fantastic in my ears, colored
like a toucan in the zoo.
And yet the ordinance is clear: “Four armed guards,
strong metal grills behind the bridge, the engine-room
enclosed–in case of piracy.”
The socks of the sentry are green.
Up and down, up and down he paces, between the
bridge and the first of the life-boats.
In my deck chair I grow restless.
Am I then so far removed from life, so wrapped in
cotton wool, so deep-sunk in the soft lap of civilization,
that I cannot feel the cold splash of truth?
It is a disquieting thought–for certainly piracy seems
as fantastic as ever.
The socks of the sentry annoy me. They are _too_
green for so hot a day.
And his shoes squeak.
I should feel much cooler if he wouldn’t pace so.
Piracy!
(Somewhere on the River)
Eunice Tietjens poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Tietjens, Eunice
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