Two people finally meet in an upper room after long, separate journeys that hurt others—one through carelessness, the other despite care. From the balcony they take in the Corpus Christi street scene: bullock-wagons loaded with birch branches, wheat fields, a green river, and snow-lit mountains. The speaker feels a sudden quiver of exultation, like morning wind through a white birch, and sees the beloved glow with the same fresh radiance as the peaks. In that moment they shed the world, immortality, and all restraint. Their love is shameless, indifferent, even mocking, and they dance in and out of shadow and sunlight. The mood is ecstatic and intimate—two bright, sharp figures wholly present, creating their own defiant heaven simply by touching and being together.
Frohnleichnam — Summary
You have come your way, I have come my way; You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all; I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.
But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding We have come our ways and met at last Here in this upper room.
Here the balcony Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly Go by with their loads of green and silver birch-trees For the feast of Corpus Christi.
Here from the balcony We look over the growing wheat, where the jade-green river Goes between the pine-woods, Over and beyond to where the many mountains Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.
I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch. You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch Day and make magic in heaven.
At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white; At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.
Shameless and callous I love you; Out of indifference I love you; Out of mockery we dance together, Out of the sunshine into the shadow, Passing across the shadow into the sunlight, Out of sunlight to shadow.
As we dance Your eyes take all of me in as a communication; As we dance I see you, ah, in full! Only to dance together in triumph of being together Two white ones, sharp, vindicated, Shining and touching, Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.