A Woman of Thirty | Page 6

by one?We touch our memories and put them all away--?How shall I dare to look at them?When you are gone!
III
There is no beginning to my love?Nor any end--?It is about your head?Like the deep air,?More than your breath can spend.?Oft is about your heart?Like arms of faith--?Where you go, it is there.
IV
There are no last things to say,?What promise can I make??You know my love so well.?All that I have is yours to take.?(How will it be, with part of me away,?Must not my soul be changed?)
Shall I stay young for memory's sake??Shall I be old and grave and grey??If I might choose, how could I tell!
V
The You I know?I shall not see again,?A stranger will return.
How shall I win the love?Which he has kept apart?With a blurred image which once was I?
I shall not know his heart,?How can I learn?
Sorrow
Sorrow stands in a wide place,?Blind--blind--?Beauty and joy are petals blown?Across her granite face,?They cannot find?Sight or sentience in stone.
Yesterday's beauty and joy lie deep?In sorrow's heart, asleep.
Prison
I close the book--the story has grown dim,?The plot confused; the hero fades?Behind unmeaning words, and over him?The covers close like window shades?On empty windows. The watchful room?Is weary. Dully the green lamp stares?Into the shadows. The coals are dumb,?The clock ticks heavily. The chairs?Wait sullenly for guests who never come.
Suppose I leave this house, suppose my feet?Plodding into the night?Carry me down the empty street?Made hideous with arcs of purple light...?Inevitably I must return to bed.?The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks.?I am their prisoner. I have no more chance?Of escape, when all is said,?Than a dying beetle in a box--?And life, and love,--and death--have gone to France.
The Dream House
I steal across the sodden floor
And dead leaves blow about,?Where once we planned an iron door
To shut the whole world out;
I find the hearth, its fires unlit,
Its ashes cold--Tonight?Only the stars give warmth to it,
Only the moon gives light.
And yonder on our spacious bed
Fashioned for love and sleep?The Autumn goldenrod lies dead,
The maple-leaves lie deep.
III. Studies and Designs
A Japanese Vase?(A Design to be Wrought in Metals)
Five harsh, black birds in shining bronze come crying?Into a silver sky,?Piercing and jubilant is the shape of their flying,?Their beaks are pointed with delight,?Curved sharply with desire,?The passionate direction of their flight,?Clear and high,?Stretches their bodies taut like humming wire.?The cold wind blows into angry patterns the jet-bright?Feathers of their wings,?Their claws curl loosely, safely, about nothingness,?They clasp no things.?Direction and desire they possess?By which in sharp, unswerving flight they hold?Across an iron sea to the golden beach?Whereon lies carrion, their feast. A shore of gold?That birds wrought on a vase can never reach.
The Bow Moon?(A print by Hiroshige)
From the dawn, Take San,?Ungathered star,?Follow me back through night?Till I recapture?Evening.
(The bending hours of darkness?Sway apart like lilies?Before the backward-blowing wind.)
At last,?Bearing in her mysterious bosom?Unravished beauty,?Dark Yesterday rises to view against her silent sky?Irrevocable... secret...?Confronting the fantastic dream?Of an impossible Tomorrow.
And that frail bridge,?Delicate, immutable,?Which rises higher than the moon,?More everlasting than the fading sky,?Joining What-was-not with What-might-have-been,?That bridge were named "Today"?If I had loved you, Take San,?If you had loved me.
An Italian Chest?(Lorenzo Designs a Bas-Relief)
Lust is the oldest lion of them all?And he shall have first place,?With a malignant growl, satirical,?To curve in foliations prodigal?Round and around his face,?Extending till the echoes interlace?With Pride and Prudence, two cranes, gaunt and tall.
Four lesser lions crouch and malign the cranes,?Cursing and gossiping they shake their manes?While from their long tongues leak?Drops of thin venom as they speak.?The cranes, unmoved, peck grapes and grains?From a huge cornucopia, which rains?A plenteous meal from its antique?Interior (a note quite curiously Greek).
And nine long serpents twist?And twine, twist and twine,?A riotously beautiful design?Whose elements consist?Of eloquent spirals, fair and fine,?Embracing cranes and lions, who exist?Seemingly free, yet tangled in that living vine.
And in this chest shall be?Two cubic meters of space?Enough to hold all memory?Of you and me--?And this shall be the place?Where silence shall embrace?Our bodies, and obliterate the trace?Our souls made on the purity?Of night...?Now lock the chest, for we?Are dead, and lose the key!
The Pedlar
Hark, people, to the cry?Of this curious young magician-pedlar?Seeking a golden bowl!
He wanders through the city?Offering useful tin-ware?For all the ancient metal?You have left to rust?In the dim, dusty attic?Or mouldy cellar?Of your soul.
He refuses nothing--?Rusty nails?Which may have played their part?In a crucifixion--?For ten of these he will give?A new tin spoon.
The andirons?Once guarding hearth-fires of content,?Now dusty and forgotten?In an obscure corner,?He will give for these?A new tin tea-kettle?With a wooden handle.
And for this antique bowl?Fashioned to hold?Roses or wine?
The eyes of the pedlar glisten!?O woman, if acid reveal?Gold beneath the tarnished surface?He will gladly give you?His hands, his eyes, his soul,?His young, white body--
If not,?A mocking laugh?And a bright tin sieve?To hold your wine?And roses.
Portrait of a Lady in