Was ever a woman
Quite alone for a day?
Other women will come
Who should stay away.
Because my casement's open,
As I wait here for you,
Comes the faint Persephone
Trailing through the dew.
She has lived a thousand years,
Clasped her cosmic rose;
Why she comes to trouble me
Only heaven knows!
And there's another woman
Keeps whispering in my ear,
Till she has the whole house
Pierced through with fear.
The “crumps” are falling twenty to the minute.
We crouch, and wait the end of it--or us.
Just behind the trench, before, and in it,
The “crumps” are falling twenty to the minute;
(O Framilode! O Maisemore’s laughing linnet!)
Here comes a monster like a motor-bus.
The “crumps” are falling twenty to the minute:
We crouch and wait the end of it--or us.
The long, grim years with iron tread
Move down the shuttered isle
Of time's unrecking labyrinth
Paved with forgotten dead.
And I, a feather in their wake,
Gaze long and tremblingly
Into these sunless corridors,
Praying the light to break!
Gray birds of passage from another sky
Are those long hours I sit and wait for you;
Borne by strong wings across the sunlit blue
They go--dark flecks of shadow drifting by.
Sometimes they bring a song--a joyful cry,
As morn and eve your coming used to do;
But sometimes plaintive notes of sorrow too,
Amid the joyful echoes wail and die.
Then as I watch the beating of the wings
That seek a haven by far northern lakes,
And catch the note of some bird-heart that sings,
Or hear the plaintive cry of one that breaks,
I turn once more to half-forgotten things,
And the old longing in my heart awakes.
The church has pieces jutting out
Where corners of the walls begin.
I have one for my little house,
And I can feel myself go in.
I feel myself go in the bricks,
And I can see myself in there.
I'm always waiting all alone,
I'm sitting on a little chair.
And I am sitting very still,
And I am waiting on and on
For something that is never there,
For something that is gone.
The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,
The crisping steam of a train
Melts in the air, while two black birds
Sweep past the window again.
Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait
In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy
To leap down at our gate.
He has passed us by; but is it
Relief that starts in my breast?
Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still
She has no rest.
A WIND comes from the north
Blowing little flocks of birds
Like spray across the town,
And a train, roaring forth,
Rushes stampeding down
With cries and flying curds
Of steam, out of the darkening north.
Whither I turn and set
Like a needle steadfastly,
Waiting ever to get
The news that she is free;
But ever fixed, as yet,
To the lode of her agony.
Because I have called to you
as the flame flamingo calls,
or the want of a spotted hawk
is called —
because in the dusk
the warblers shoot the running
waters of short songs to the
homecoming warblers —
because
the cry here is wing to wing
and song to song —
i am waiting,
waiting with the flame flamingo,
the spotted hawk, the running water
warbler —
waiting for you.
Child of the Aztec gods, how long must we listen here, how long before we go?
The dust is deep on the lintels.
The dust is dark on the doors.
If the dreams shake our bones, what can we say or do?
Since early morning we waited.
Since early, early morning, child.
There must be dreams on the way now.
There must be a song for our bones.
The dust gets deeper and darker.
Do the doors and lintels shudder?
How long must we listen here?
How long before we go?
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.