Your face from my face slips,
Lover of my lips.
Holder of my heart,
For all our close companionships,
We are apart.
Apart, apart, we are apart.
Crying beauty leaves me dumb,
Your fire, cold and still.
I watch the hours of morning come
And always will,
With this dull agony in my heart —
We are apart.
Strong, solemn, stupid-kind;
Parting, we leave behind
Silence, where our foot-steps sound
Dead on the hollow ground.
These were his songs. Now he has broken them.
All he has made, that has he also slain :
Seeing my beauty budding, broke the stem ;
Finding his likeness here, where he has lain,
Finding the flame of his hurt spirit here
In this small pool that motioned with his shade,
Seeing himself, he smote me with his fear —
He only lives to break what he has made.
All, all he fathered, all that lived by him,
Shut from his face with banging of loud doors.
The sun, losing his spirit, now is gone dim ;
Only the sea that roared before, still roars.
Now it is time to go, softly away ;
We will grow fragile, songs, soon we will fade.
He has no place for us, we cannot stay —
He cannot bear the beauty he has made.
You are no more, but sunken in a sea
Sheer into dream, ten thousand leagues, you fell ;
And now you lie green-golden, while a bell
Swings with the tide, my heart : and all is well
Till I look down, and wavering, the spell —
Your loveliness — returns. There in the sea,
Where you lie amber-pale and coral-cool,
You are most loved, most lost, most beautiful.
Other hearts have broken gracefully, for your sake,
And now your eyes reproach me that my ache
Is awkward, and my arms
Are angular across my breast
Where emptiness is pressed.
I understand what you were running for,
Slim naked boy, and why from far inland
You came between dark hills. I know the roar
The sea makes in some ears. I understand.
I understand why you were running now
And how you heard the sea resound, and how
You leaped and left your valley for the long
Brown road. I understand the song
You chanted with your running, with your feet
Marking the measure of your high heart's beat.
Now you are broken. Seeing your wide brow
I see your dreams. I understand you now.
Since I have run like you, I understand
The throat's long wish, the breath that comes so quick,
The heart's light leap, the heels that drag so sick,
And warped heat wrinkles, lengthening the sand. . . .
Over you, over you, over,
I hang like a wave, like a lover,
Like a scimitar edged with hate ;
Too heavy with grief to be straight
And far,
Too frail to ever discover
How to fall like a wave or a lover —
Or a blue-thin scimitar.
The stone falls, the bird flies, the arrow goes home,
But we have no motion, we scatter like foam.
O, give me a song to sing for your sorrow,
A song that will lift, like a wave from the reef,
You and myself, that will fling like an arrow
My poor scattered words to the target of grief:
I want to forget, to remember no morrow,
To go with the petrel, to go with the leaf. . . .
We would fly with all things to the goal of their flying,
We would turn with all things to the magnetic star,
But we never can live, because of our dying,
And we never can be, for the things that we are.
We alone of all creatures — the stones more than we —
Have no end, no motion, no destiny.
O little lady with the yellow fan
Why are you so sad?
Why does a tear stand
Like a tea-flower bud upon your cheek?
Your dress is of blue and scarlet silk,
Your slippers are embroidered with gems,
A gold and emerald butterfly has lighted in your hair,
Your serving-maid stands near
Awaiting your command,
And if you lifted but one slender finger
A chariot would come and carry you away to your father's palace.
Why are you so sad?
It is because the ships beside the shore
Spread their dark sails to the sea-blowing breeze;
The tide is high, and soon will set toward the distant islands,
And there is a gleam of swords and armour,
Beneath the crawling shadow
Of a crumbling temple to gods long-forgotten,
The wild grape twines amid the fragments
Of shattered pillars prone upon the ground,
And its dark leaves hide from sight the broken sculptures
Of faun and youth and maiden,
That once stood in the temple pediment,
Young, naked, beautiful.
In wild freedom it climbs over the carved acanthus
leaves of the crumbling columns,
And weaves a funeral wreath over their dead beauty.
The wild bees hum and buzz
Among the grape-flowers, heavy with honeyed perfume,
Under the drowsy noonday sun,
That spills its amber wine from a full goblet over the
thirsting hillside.
You went away in summertime
When leaves and flowers were young,
And birds still lingered in the fields
With many songs unsung.
I'm glad it was in summertime
When skies were clear and blue,
I could not say good-bye to you
And bear the winter too.
You have made my voice
A rippling laugh
But my heart
A crying thing ...
’Tis better thus:
A fleeting kiss
And then,
The dark....
I came
In the blinding sweep
Of ecstatic pain,
I go
In the throbbing pulse
Of aching space--
In the eons between
I piled upon you
Pain on pain
Ache on ache
And yet as I go
I shall know
That you will grieve
And want me back....