It never came into my mind
Until I was ready to die
That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
For I was seventy, she was thirty—five,
And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband
Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
For all my wisdom and grace of mind
Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,
But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength
Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat
Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch
One time at Georgie Kirby’s.
So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard—
That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!
The working girls in the morning are going to work —
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of youngwoman
life I feel a wonder about where it is all
going, so many with a peach bloom of young years
on them and laughter of red lips and memories in
their eyes of dances the night before and plays and
walks.
Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and
so here are always the others, those who have been
over the way, the women who know each one the
end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the
clew, the how and the why of the dances and the
Like black ice
Scrolled over with unintelligible patterns by an ignorant skater
Is the dulled surface of my heart.
When I was young my heart was old,
My heart was rich and very wise :
Now all its wisdom has been told
And all its wealth is fairy gold
And all its joy futilities.
My heart would say, when I was young,
"It would be well to grieve no more.
The griefs you sing had all been sung
Before you learned your mother-tongue,
And all your tears been shed before."
When I was young my heart would say:
"What childish things are these you seek?
The piper's price is large to pay
And there will come a reckoning day!"
In this wise way my heart would speak.
But now it cries continually.