The woman who has grown old
And knows desire must die,
Yet turns to love again,
Hears the crows' cry.
She is a stem long hardened,
A weed that no scythe mows.
The heart's laughter will be to her
The crying of the crows.
Who slide in the air with the same voice
Over what yields not, and what yields,
Alike in spring, and when there is only bitter
Winter-burning in the fields.
Warped... gland-dry...
With spine askew
And body shrunken into half its space...
Well-used as some cracked paving-stone...
Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
A stamp... as of innumerable feet.
You have always gotten up after blows
And smiled... and shaken off the dust...
Only you could not shake the darkness
From off the bruised brown of your eyes.
She was a wild plum flower,
As fair as that fair thing;
A breathless blowing hers,
As it were the last spring.
Not anything to her
A spire with stars for fold;
A rose though but the one;
Or a sack full of gold.
We could not make her care
For sheep bells coming home;
For yarrow in a field;
For gilded frock or comb.
Once, like a wild plum flower.
She strewed her leaves to night,
All her white loneliness
In a moment gone from sight.
The road is left; the yard;
And the old sycamore;
Larkspurs tall in the grass
Just at the door;
And the thick gusty wind that breaks
The clothes-props down;
She has a bed to make; for her tall girl
A buff-sprigged gown.
But oh, to have him back again
Flashing and young;
To sit in yonder chair,
And with delicate tongue
To talk to her of love,
And things that last —
Go call him from his grave
Where he lies fast!
Heap slumber on your eyes;
Stop your mouth with dust
Be all that you were not,
As dead folk must.
Be all that you were not,
Unmindful, cold, apart—
The kiss you gave that dusk
Tears at your heart!
Oh, for a world empty of you,
Quite bare of anything.
With any likeness to the old.
For wild remembering!
A world so wholly different,
I would be different too.
And read, or mend, or plant the bulbs,
Without a thought of you.
But this can never be at all;
Some small thing thereabout
Would bring that same hurt back again,
And tear my wild heart out.
Perhaps the smell of yarrow flowers,
Of yarrow flowers set
In a lost field. White: yarrow flowers.
Out in the August wet.
Three sycamores down the road,
High, blotched, shaken in the cold
A field; cut in its grass,
A pool, like small, wild gold.
And this was all I saw.
As you came by with me
A day last week. Now you are dead.
What is it that I see?
Three sycamores down the road.
High, blotched, shaken in the cold;
A field; cut in its grass,
A pool, like small, wild gold.
She had a garden full of herbs.
And many another pleasant thing.
Like pink round asters in the fall.
Blue flags, white flags a week in spring.
Housewives ran in each hour or so.
For sprigs of thyme, mint, parsley too;
For pans to borrow, or some meal;
She was the kindest thing they knew.
Tall, and half slender, slightly grey.
With gay, thin lips, eyes flower-clear.
She bragged her stock was Puritan;
Her usual mood was Cavalier.
Ample of deed; clipped, warm of speech.
Each day in some large-flowered gown.
She went the rounds to sad, to sick
Saint, humorist to the faded town.
As one, who comes back to a house of yore,
Some high old house in legendary trees.
And misses blue flower here; there, at the door.
Notes thinning bush, a difference in the bees;
Then enters, halts, and of a sudden knows
A face gone out, a step lost on the stair.
So I, in England. Every buffet shows
Upon her cheek; her every bone lies bare.
Yet comes not still the bloom to urban bough?
Yet pluck not girls the country thorn and sigh?
Folks buy, and sow, and neighbors go about?
Oh, different! Oh, more worth loving now.
Spent loveliness, that hurts me like a cry; —
The step lost on the stair, the face gone out!
I HEARD the spouts begin to cry
As I came over the hill;
How could they know the poignant thing
That I had kept so still?
Like to the gold in a king’s house,
Like to that gold there shone
Seven wet small windows, and as one
Stared me down to the bone.
And there was not in all the world
A place for me to hide
From the hurt music of that cry:
Oh, if I had but died!
As I came down the Old York Road
Saint John's began to ring,
Across the Dead Folk in the grass,
The wide new dusk of spring.
Each window was a half-blown flower,
The pool beneath the hedge
Looked like a scrap of Tyrian gold
Dropped thinly in the sedge.
I think that never in the world
Blew there a tree so white
As the wild cherry by the wall,
So lonely to the sight.
As I came down the Old York Road
Not any soul was near,
Except two lovers going by
Within the fleet of year.