If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.
People that I meet and pass
In the city's broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before,
Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?
Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places--
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.
--People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?
Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;
Like barley bending
And rising again,
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain;
So would I softly,
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.
Will it always be like this until I am dead,
Every spring must I bear it all again
With the first red haze of the budding maple boughs,
And the first sweet-smelling rain?
Oh I am like a rock in the rising river
Where the flooded water breaks with a low call--
Like a rock that knows the cry of the waters
And cannot answer at all.
Aloof as aged kings,
Wearing like them the purple,
The mountains ring the mesa
Crowned with a dusky light;
Many a time I watched
That coming-on of darkness
Till stars burned through the heavens
Intolerably bright.
It was not long I lived there
But I became a woman
Under those vehement stars.
For it was there I heard
For the first time my spirit
Forging an iron rule for me,
As though with slow cold hammers
Beating out word by word:
In the fine land of Nowhere,
On the far side of There,
We shall be very happy,
We shall have no care ;
You will be the blossom;
I shall be the bough;
In the great time coming
After Now.
While you are crying.
Listen to my song;
My own heart is breaking.
But I shall be strong:
I shall be strong for thinking
Of the fine days and fair,
When we are done with being
Anywhere.
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end--
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release--
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best--
God! but the interest!
Happier than green-kirtled apple-trees
Waving their soft-rimmed fans of light
And taking the morning mist, in quick breaths,
You sit in the woven meditation and surprise
Of a morning uncovering its wind-wreathed head.
And yet within the light stillness of your soul
Dream-heavy guards sleep uneasily
Over the body of your last slain sorrow.
An old, old couple in a blossoming garden. . . .
Love, inarticulate, nestles close between them.
And the old woman and the old man.
And Love,
Sit watching fireflies. . . .
Tiny torches flashing with pale, green light
In the heavy white dew.
Oh roses. . .roses. . .roses. . .cease your blossoming!
Kind crystal dew
Put out the firefly torches
Before they light the little paths to sorrow. . . .
Earth is too beautiful. . . .
And the man and the woman are old, so old,
And tired.
Now they sit quietly with calm, closed eyes. . . .
Only Love, nestled close between them,
I HEARD the spouts begin to cry
As I came over the hill;
How could they know the poignant thing
That I had kept so still?
Like to the gold in a king’s house,
Like to that gold there shone
Seven wet small windows, and as one
Stared me down to the bone.
And there was not in all the world
A place for me to hide
From the hurt music of that cry:
Oh, if I had but died!
By the pool of life
Willows are drooping tonight
I can see no stars.
What dances in the water?
O my clouds dripping with tears.
And again the flowers are come
And the light shakes,
And no tiny voice is dumb,
And a bud breaks
On the humble bush and the proud restless tree.
Come with me!
Look, this little flower is pink,
And this one white.
Here’s a pearl cup for your drink,
Here’s for your delight
A yellow one, sweet with honey,
Here’s fairy money
Silver bright
Scattered over the grass
As we pass.
Here’s moss. How the smell of it lingers