Old Jock and Marie Anne could never find
Raspberries of the glowing amber kind
To fill the “ancient porcelain bowl.” (’Twas lined
With amber glaze; outside a gold vine wound
In such a graceful pattern round and round.)
But if my Mother looked she always found
Enough to fill the bowl. That day we’d three
Distinguished guests. I loved to have them see
My lovely Mother as she looked at tea....
Her gown of creamy lace--her shining hair,
Her beads of old carved amber ... all her rare
Fragile soft richness, like the berries there
With their pale amber bloom. I loved her so....
I wished that every body there could know....
“Why don’t you eat your berries, Child?” ... then low
Beloved Friend,
I write this verse to you
As if it were a letter I could send.
It seems to me sometimes my heart slips through
The purple barriers between us two,
And finds again your fire, your sacred bread:
Their warmth and wholesome sweetness ...
Fire and Bread!
Beloved, these symbols nourish Life anew ...
You are not dead!
FLORENCE
How this old terrace of mellow, creamy stone
Grows warm in this noontide sun of Italy ...
I sit alone
And dream a piteous dream of ecstasy
And suddenly wake!
In that raw town by a Canadian lake
Does she pause now ... to watch the falling snow?
Before me stretch the olive trees that glow
With their soft silvery radiance; far below
The towers of Florence rise, like tall carved flowers.
Ah I know well she does not count her hours
That swiftly pass from dawn to candle-light ...
She has the sun-filled day ...
I but the night!
VENICE
“O Mistress Mary--Mistress Mary--
What have you found in your new old house?
Paperers are waiting you, and carpenters, and gardeners--
And you are up garret, just as still as a mouse!
What makes your eyes so wet and so round?
Mary--Mary! What have you found?”
“Where the sour old wind grieves under the eaves
There’s an old trunk hid--Oh the dust on the lid!
I pulled out from it a gay round box,
And in it were worn-out boots and socks--
Little, soft socks and little, stout boots--
And a child’s crude drawings of flowers and fruits,
And a tiny toy whip, and a ship and a ball--
Oh--they’re just like a little lost boy! That’s all!”
Love me because I am lost;
Love me that I am undone.
That is brave, — no man has wished it.
Not one.
Be strong, to look on my heart
As others look on my face.
Love me, — I tell you that it is a ravaged
Terrible place.
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.