I AM SO tired I cannot move,
I would sit still and love.
I carried souls so long in pain,
I too would be a child again.
Man who is not child to woman
Is either rogue or more than human. —
I rested once upon my father's strength:
O to find peace in love at length!
Man, are you strong to take my proffered hand,
And to be kind when you command?
There was a saint who carried children up a steep,
Make me your child, and let me sleep.
O PITYING heart be strong!
Our load is heavy and the road is long.
And there is little light to cheer our day
And little kindness on the mourner's way.
How nonchalantly I spend with little thrift
His proud sparse earnings which were the frugal pay
Of a man’s stout will and honorable day.
What insolent spending of that sturdy gift!
When I reflect on him he seems like one
Who on a bleak hill set a lonely pine.
He saw the North Star in its branches shine.
His honest valors are by me undone.
Why I should own his box I cannot see.
For his scant legacy I am unfit.
Yet since he’s in the yard I have his key,
And somehow I am master over it.
I am like one who decks the Holy Tree
With tinsel shapes; then casts it in the pit.
--I weep--
Not as the young do noisily,
Not as the aged rustily,
But quietly.
Drop by drop the great tears
Splash upon my hands,
And save you saw them shine,
You would not know
I wept.
When the green lies over the earth, my dear,
A mantle of witching grace,
When the smile and the tear of the young child year
Dimple across its face,
And then flee, when the wind all day is sweet
With the breath of growing things,
When the wooing bird lights on restless feet
And chirrups and trills and sings
To his lady-love
In the green above,
Then oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year,
Yours is the face that I long to have near,
Yours is the face, my dear.
But the green is hiding your curls, my dear,
Your curls so shining and sweet;
And the gold-hearted daisies this many a year
Touch me, touch me,
Little cool grass fingers,
Elusive, delicate grass fingers.
With your shy brushings,
Touch my face--
My naked arms--
My thighs--
My feet.
Is there nothing that is kind?
You need not fear me.
Soon I shall be too far beneath you,
For you to reach me, even,
With your tiny, timorous toes.
Always at dusk, the same tearless experience,
The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path
To the same well-worn rock;
The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun,
The same tints--rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey,
Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;
Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point;
Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars,
Two eyes unfathomable, soul-searing,
Watching, watching--watching me;
The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will dusk after dusk;
The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the night, chin on knees,
Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly miserable,--The eyes of my Regret.
When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?
My heart is like a cleft pomegranate
Bleeding crimson seeds
And dripping them on the ground.
My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full,
And its seeds are bursting from it.
But how is this other than a torment to me!
I, who am shut up, with broken crockery,
In a dark closet!
See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lustres
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.
When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.
Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch
I broke and bruised your rose.
I hardly could suppose
It were a thing so fragile that my clutch
Could kill it, thus.
It stood so proudly up upon its stem,
I knew no thought of fear,
And coming very near
Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem,
Tearing it down.
Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one,
The crimson petals, all
Outspread about my fall.
They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone
Of memory.
And with my words I carve a little jar
White phlox and white hydrangeas.
High, thin clouds,
A low, warm sun.
So it is this afternoon.
But the phlox will be a drift of petals.
And the hydrangeas stained and fallen
Before you come again.
I cannot look at the flowers,
Nor the lifting leaves of the trees.
Without you, there is no garden,
No bright colours.
No shining leaves.
There is only space,
Stretching endlessly forward —
And I walk, bent, unseeing.
Waiting to catch the first faint scuffle