Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window.
Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.
I LOVE the stone of your threshold,
I love the path without it,
I love the briar in its borders,
With the brave young plants about it.
There is pleasure in sight of your windows.
And passing, in decorous night,
I smile my love to your window
And bow my love to your light.
Outside the long window,
With his head on the stone sill,
The dog is lying,
Gazing at his Beloved.
His eyes are wet and urgent,
And his body is taut and shaking.
It is cold on the terrace;
A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,
But the dog gazes through the glass
And is content.
The Beloved is writing a letter.
Occasionally she speaks to the dog,
But she is thinking of her writing.
Does she, too, give her devotion to one
Not worthy?
See ! He trails his toes
Through the long streaks of moonlight.
And the nails of his fingers glitter :
They claw and flash among the tree-tops.
His lips suck at my open window.
And his breath creeps about my body
And lies in pools under my knees.
I can see his mouth sway and wobble.
Sticking itself against the window-jambs.
But the moonlight is bright on the floor,
Without a shadow.
Hark ! A hare is strangling in the forest.
And the wind tears a shutter from the wall.
It is not the bright light in your window
Which dazzles my eyes ;
It is the dim outline of your shadow
Moving upon the shoji.
A LADDER sticking up at the open window,
The top of an old ladder ;
And all of Summer is there.
Great waves and tufts of wistaria surge across the window,
And a thin, belated blossom
Jerks up and down in the sunlight ;
Purple translucence against the blue sky.
"Tie back this branch," I say,
But my hands are sticky with leaves.
And my nostrils widen to the smell of crushed green.
The ladder moves uneasily at the open window.
And I call to the man beneath,
"Tie back that branch."
There is a ladder leaning against the window-sill.
And a mutter of thunder in the air.