I would make you cookies
But you could not eat them ;
I would bring you roses
But you would not care.
In your scornful beauty,
Arrogant and patient,
Though I'd die to please you
You lie silent there.
Your once wanton sister
Creeps about on tiptoe,
And your brother hurries
At your slightest nod :
Watching at your bedside
When you sleep I tremble
Lest before you waken
You go back to God.
I sit and sew--a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams--
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath--
But--I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew--my heart aches with desire--
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe--
But--I must sit and sew.--
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
A traveller who has always heard
That on this journey he some day must go,
Yet shudders now, when at the fatal word
He starts upon the lonesome, dreary way.
The past, a page of joy and woe,--the future, none can say.
There is tropical warmth and languorous life
Where the roses lie
In a tempting drift
Of pink and red and golden light
Untouched as yet by the pruning knife.
And the still, warm life of the roses fair
That whisper "Come,"
With promises
Of sweet caresses, close and pure
Has a thorny whiff in the perfumed air.
There are thorns and love in the roses' bed,
And Satan too
Must linger there;
So Satan's wiles and the conscience stings,
Must now abide--the roses are dead.
There were four old women as old as she
Who knelt in the room where the sick one lay,
And the resador with his book of prayers
Who sat by her side all night to pray.
In the morning light her face was grey
As the ash that covered the embers still,
The black-shawled women had never stirred
And the old man's voice was hoarse and shrill.
The crucifix laid on her heaving breast
Moved with her harsh breath up and down,
And her mouth like a chicken's gaped for air
With a noise that the droning could not drown.
The sunlight poured through the open door
Where I stood and wondered how it could be
That the old, old woman with such great strength
Fought with the force we could not see.
Death is a beautiful white mask.
That slips over the face, when the moment comes,
To hide the happiness of the soul.
It might have been me in the darkened room
With the shutters closed,
Lying straight and slim
In the shuttered dusk,
In the twilight dim:
Like a silken husk
When the corn is gone,
Life withdrawn;
I am living, and she is dead —
Or is it I who have died instead?
Beside this wooden cross
By the cross of the desert cactus.
The coffin-bearers rested:
"Pray for the soul
Of Manuel Rodriguez,"
And remember
That death is the end of life.
More still than death
That waits a thousand years
In a new-ploughed field
Of up-turned bones;
So will I wait for you
A thousand years.
Now I go, do not weep, woman —
Woman, do not weep;
Though I go from you to die,
We shall both lie down
At the foot of the hill, and sleep.
Now I go, do not weep, woman —
Woman, do not weep;
Earth is our mother and our tent the sky.
Though I go from you to die.
We shall both lie down
At the foot of the hill, and sleep.
The odor of death
In the front of my body.
The odor of death
Before me —
Is there any one
Who would weep for me?
My wife
Would weep for me.
Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead.