Les plus lus ▸
Robert Frost
They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying.... And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive--
How else? They are not known to send the dead--
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, to ask,
‘What is it, dear?’ And she had given all
And still she had all--they had--they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, ‘What was it, dear?’
‘Enough,
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
New sap, rising
in the solitary
peach, ran from
an open wound.
I kiss her wound
to turn it into light
or some great fire
though the gun could not
be got out
put on a new black suit
in mourning for the loss
of storms that have driven me
invitations to wonder
and the great wound
I did not hope to save
now nothing
but the print of a wing
where prison wounded him
no opportunity yet
to flee in the night
the night that was the state
old and in pain
I would bring my heart
ugly as the mother of a wound
to you
like the sea alone with a captain
in the middle of a sound sleep
do not hug too hard in a tent
keep warm at night
we go to war
to lie with butchers
the green or blue
sound of the field
some deep wound
calling you down
road lost in a field
lost in marl
a wound is my cure for anything
though it may ooze now and then
out with a tooth
having been in pain all day
I am raw
and old as the earth
our selves can be one or many
at their own table
breed a kind of inward distance
in that void or wound
and dissemble one towards another
like a parliament
but have nothing more to do
than make clear music
One, maybe two,
Hands moving themselves,
I'll do a few.
A crimson trail,
Of lines inflicted,
By my past.
A long sleeved jumper,
Averted eyes,
False smiles.
A mistake,
A forgotten memory,
Shouldn't roam.
I tell myself,
Repeatedly,
I'm just alone.
Don't talk,
poison woven into tissue,
sepsis radiating from the site
where unspoken words putrefy
in anger and hope, toxifying
blood, anxious for salve.
dreams and wishes withering
under reality’s hot sun, lost;
an empty hole in a brick wall
betraying its completion;
absence yearning for touch.
desire unnamed, the chafing
of which tears the hole wider,
fraying thread and loosening
buttons until the entire fabric
compels thorough refashioning.
a deep wound beginning to heal,
i carved into my skin
hoping i could take their wounds on
as mine