Poems by Themis

Brain-markets

Ah, will you call all crazy vendors

To markets of the cluttered brain,

Now giddy with magician splendours,

Now drawing from a dirty drain?

What will they buy, what will they sell,

Here in the world's exchange and mart?

Drive bargains hard for heaven or hell,

Lay dizzy prices on the heart?

Here throng the crowds of fairy dreams,

And jostling thoughts, insistent wills;

Desire's high-pitched voice here screams,

Black money flows for smuggled ills.

There's just one treasure worth your buying,

Beyond all splendours you may find,

Within the tumult and the crying —

The silence of the sunlit mind.

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