Minna XXVII
Your mind is a little, clandestine pastel
Shaped into a posture of rigid grief.
Its colors huddle together
And make a stunted, aching lyric....
Ah frail-flowered moment preceding reality--
Your eyelids open; the little pastel dies.
Poems on the topic: grief
Poems on the topic “grief” on Poets.by.
Imaginary People: Woman
To hide your isolation, you become
Tame and loquacious, bowing to the men
Who bring you ornaments and poverties.
Your cryptic melancholy dwindles then,
Solved by the distant contrast of your words.
Your loneliness, with an amused relief,
Sits listening to your volubility
And idling with an enervated grief.
The play does not begin until you say
Your last "good-night," for you have only made
A swindled fantasy regain its parts.
Throughout the night you held an unseen blade
Upon your lap and trifled with its hilt,
And now you lift it with submissive dread.
Should you attack your loneliness and grief
Now that they are asleep? You shake your head.
The Mourner
The night that wee Francesca died
The little night wind sighed and sighed.
Chill and dew-laden it crept in.
Beneath her tiny hands, so thin,
I laid some little friendly flowers
That saw her laugh in sunshine hours.
She loved those pansy faces best,
Wise-eyed they went with her to rest.
The trees looked very dark and old,
The stars gleamed so far off and cold.
Only the little night wind sighed
The night that wee Francesca died.
Decoration
A macaw preens upon a branch outspread
With jewelry of seed. He's deaf and mute.
The sky behind him splits like gorgeous fruit
And claw-like leaves clutch light till it has bled.
The raw diagonal bounty of his wings
Scrapes on the eye color too chafed. He beats
A flattered tail out against gauzy heats;
He has the frustrate look of cheated kings.
And all the simple evening passes by:
A gillyflower spans its little height
And lovers with their mouths press out their grief.
The bird fans wide his striped regality
Prismatic, while against a sky breath-white
A crystal tree lets fall a crystal leaf.
The Kiss
Heap slumber on your eyes;
Stop your mouth with dust
Be all that you were not,
As dead folk must.
Be all that you were not,
Unmindful, cold, apart—
The kiss you gave that dusk
Tears at your heart!
Wise
An apple orchard smells like wine;
A succory flower is blue;
Until Grief touched these eyes of mine,
Such things I never knew.
And now indeed I know so plain
Why one would like to cry
When spouts are full of April rain —
Such lonely folk go by!
So wise — so wise — that my tears fall
Each breaking of the dawn;
That I would run to tell you all —
But you are dead and gone.
The Saint-Gaudens Statue in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington
Are there no tears for other hearts to shed?
Those heavy eyes have drained the world of grief,
And yet no solace found, no drear relief.
Such as my heart would seek, and find, I know,
Had I been given the weight of that vast woe,
And wept through pain to peace! But you, instead,
Have drowned all healing in a shoreless sea
Of unforgiven wrong, whose every breath
Lifts windy clamor through the soul's hushed space.
Fanning to greater grief, to swifter glow.
The flame that smolders still in that bronze face,
Sadder than life, and sadder far than death,
Because of love renounced and joy to be.
And faith and hope and immortality.
A Legacy
My soul was silent with delight
Too long!
And then, after we parted,
Love found me in the night,
Wandering bitter-hearted,
And touched my lips with song;
That I, silent no more, might sound your praise,
And all the sweetness of your ways,
Find melodies for my great wrong —
And so live tunefully the tuneless days.
Friends
Grief shall not be my friend! She shall not be
Companion of my table, path or bed.
She shall not share my salt nor break my bread,
Nor walk nor weep nor dream nor wake with me:
I will not trust her mournful company.
Nor listen to her whisperings of the dead,
Why should I heed her somber eyelid's red?
Tears are but chains and I, I would be free!
For grief would make a laggard of my will,
And me, a puny thing of anguished need,
A memory! And I would die at length,
Close to the thought of you — and loving still:
So will I choose a friend of stouter creed,
The wingless, tearless thing the heart calls strength.
The Back Stairs
In the afternoon
When no one is in the house,
I suddenly hear dull dragging feet
Go fumbling down those dark back stairs,
That climb up twisting,
As if they wanted no one to see them.
Beating a dirge upon the bare planks
I hear those feet and the creak of a long-locked door.
My mother often went
Up and down those selfsame stairs,
From the room where by the window
She would sit all day and listlessly
Look on the world that had destroyed her,
She would go down in the evening
To the room where she would sleep,
Or rather, not sleep, but all night
Bring your Beauty
Bring your beauty, bring your laughter, bring even your fears,
Bring the grief that is, the joy that was in other years,
Bring again the happiness, bring love, bring tears.
There was laughter once, there were grave, happy eyes,
Talk of firm earth, old earth-sweeping mysteries:
There were great silences under clear dark skies.
Now is silence, now is loneliness complete; all is done.
The thrush sings at dawn, too sweet, up creeps the sun:
But all is silent, silent, for all that was is done.
Yet bring beauty and bring laughter, and bring even tears,
And cast them down; strew your happiness and fears,
Then leave them to the darkness of thought and years.
Fears in that darkness die; they have no spring.
Eyes
A winter sky of pale blue and pale gold,
Bare trees, a wind that made the wood-path cold,
And one slow-moving figure, gray and old.
We met where the soft path falls from the wood
Down to the village. As I came near she stood
And answered when I spoke, drawing the hood
Back from her face. I saw only her eyes,
Large and sad. I could not bear those eyes.
They were like new graves. I could not bear her eyes.
But what we said as each passed on is gone.
We looked and spoke and passed like strangers on,
I to the high wood, she towards the paling sun.
And there, where the clear-heavened small pool lies,
And the tallest beeches brush the bending skies,
In pool and tree I saw again her eyes.
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