Last night when my work was done,
And my estranged hands
Were becoming mutually interested
In such forgotten things as pulses,
I looked out of a window
Into a glittering night sky.
And instantly
I began to feather-stitch a ring around the moon.
My hands are motion ; they cannot rest.
They are the foam upon the sea,
Borne with a wave to a fleeting crest,
Hurled back, borne on, unceasingly.
They are existent and made whole
In their unrest, as the entity
Of foam is spun where waters roll
Back, and on, eternally.
I have unleashed my hands, like hounds,
And I must not call them back;
They are off with virile bounds
On the hidden quarry's track.
Though there come rain or sun —
Fleet and lean and white.
They will follow the scent until they run
The quarry to earth, and the quarry is night.
I who have spent my hands in futile weaving,
And you who flung yours out before the sun,
For all you held, for all my restless grieving,
What have you, more than I have, really won?
My industry has faltered; through your fingers
Your sunlight sifts like finely running sands;
And Time shall bring us, when the last star lingers,
A cross to hold, made of our humbled hands.
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream)
I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed.
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine)
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You gave me your hand,
I held it to be
The last word, the dear word,
The soul’s entity;
I cherished it, treasured it,
Only to find
I held but a gauntlet—
That I had been blind!
Liza, go steep your long white hands
In the cool waters of that spring
Which bubbles up through shiny sands
The color of a wild-dove's wing.
Dabble your hands, and steep them well
Until those nails are pearly white
Now rosier than a laurel bell;
Then come to me at candle-light.
Lay your cold hands across my brows,
And I shall sleep, and I shall dream
Of silver-pointed willow boughs
Dipping their fingers in a stream.
Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.
All the things we ever knew
Will be ashes in that hour,
Mark the transient butterfly,
How he hangs upon the flower.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Suffer me to cherish you
Till the dawn is in the sky.
Whether I be false or true,
Death comes in a day or two.
Dear Jane! dear winsome Jane!
How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill)
In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs,
And took my hand and said with a smile:
“You are not so ill—you’ll soon be well.”
And how the liquid thought of your eyes
Sank in my eyes like dew that slips
Into the heart of a flower.
Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortune
Could not have bought your care of me,
By day and night, and night and day;
Nor paid for your smile, nor the warmth of your soul,
In your little hands laid on my brow.
Jane, till the flame of life went out
In the dark above the disk of night
I longed and hoped to be well again
Goodbye, sweet friend, goodbye
And all the world must be
Between my friend and me ;
And nothing is, dear heart,
But hands that meet to part ;
Goodbye, sweet friend, goodbye.
Goodbye, sweet love, goodbye,
And one long grave must be
Between my love and me ;
What comfort there, dear heart,
For hands that meet to part ?
Goodbye, sweet love, goodbye.
Waving slowly before me, pushed into the dark,
Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the
bark
Of my body slowly behind.
Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night
Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if
in their flight
My hands should touch the door!
What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door
Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet,
before
I can draw back!
What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide
And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone
down the tide
Of eternal hereafter!
By the river
In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks
down,
Dropping and starting from sleep
Alone on a seat
A woman crouches.
I must go back to her.
I want to give her
Some money. Her hand slips out of the breast of
her gown
Asleep. My fingers creep
Carefully over the sweet
Thumb-mound, into the palm's deep pouches.
So, the gift!
God, how she starts!
And looks at me, and looks in the palm of her hand!