Explore "Silverpoints" by John Gray on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I / I dreamed I was a barber; and there went / Beneath my hand, oh! manes extravagant. / Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask / Of many a pleasant girl. It was my task / To gild their hair, carefully, strand by strand; / To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand; / To draw a bodkin, from a vase of kohl, / Through the closed lashes; pencils from a bowl / Of sepia to paint them underneath; / To blow upon their eyes with a soft breath. / They lay them back and watched the leaping bands.
II / The dream grew vague. I moulded with my hands / The mobile breasts, the valley; and the waist / I touched; and pigments reverently placed / Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains, / Beryls and crysolites and diaphanes, / And gems whose hot harsh names are never said. / I was a masseur; and my fingers bled / With wonder as I touched their awful limbs.