He tunes his old guitarCompulsively, and sheRolls those green eyes, but once,Three rolling decades past,He tuned his new guitarAnd his song snared her heart.
Our sister was a feeble hazel twig,While I was grim and grand and evergreen.When all her springtime colours faded, fell,And left her ragged, I was clad in green.In green. In green. And while her bare, white armsReached up in suppliance, I busied mineAmid my sweeping skirts. She shivered inThe winter wind, of course: slim and shining,Pitied. Piteous. I, the fortunate,Looked on in brooding splendour: luckyEvergreen with all my shadows gathered close.And oh, that gnawing in the pit of myFull stomach, looking at her, frail and free.Hate her? No. I know what hate is. HateIs what they gave me when they saw me greenAnd grand. You too, you know. They hated us–
Sleepless agony, to lie and claw atAir, to gasp for dreams, to drift through flickeringLives of might-have-beens, which pry and draw atOdds with shifting currents where the sickeningBends return you, stepping in that streamAnd stepping in that stream again, again,Against your will and stepping in that streamUntil a thousand pointless lives of men(Which are your own if you will only ownThem so) pass by you, and the night is thickWith living and reliving, and you, proneBeneath the weight of thoughts and waiting, sickFor sleep, can only flail and burn and ache,Reaching, dreaming, praying, breathing, “Wake.”
When I behold a forest spreadWith silken trees upon thy head;And when I see that other dressOf flowers set in comeliness;When I behold another graceIn the ascent of curious lace,Which, like a pinnacle, doth shewThe top, and the top-gallant too;Then, when I see thy tresses boundInto an oval, square, or round,And knit in knots far more than I.Can tell by tongue, or True-love tie;Next, when those lawny films I seePlay with a wild civility;And all those airy silks to flow,
Sweet serene sky-like flower,Haste to adorn her bower;From thy long cloudy bedShoot forth thy damask head!New-startled blush of Flora,The grief of pale Aurora,Who will contest no more,Haste, haste to strew her floor!Vermilion ball that's givenFrom lip to lip in heaven,Love's couch's coverlet,Haste, haste to make her bed!Dear offspring of pleased VenusAnd jolly plump Silenus,Haste, haste to deck the hairOf the only sweetly fair!