A Woman of Thirty | Page 7

Bed
I. THE COVERLET
My cowardice?Covers me safely?From everything...
From cold, which makes me yield?And quietly die?Beneath the snow;
From heat, which makes me faint?Until cool nothingness receives me;
From hurt, (Seize me, O Lion,?And I shall die of fright?Before I feel your teeth!)
From love,?Yes, most of all from love.
How can love touch me??Is it not heat,?Or cold,?Or a lion?
My cowardice covers me?Safely?From everything!
II. THE PILLOW
To know you think of me?Sustains my Spirit?Through the long night.
(My thought of you?Is wine, banishing sleep!)
Your thoughts of me are feathers,?Light nothings,?Drifting, dancing,?Floating,?Blown by a breath of fancy?Away from your sight.
They would choke me,?They would blind me?With the Nothing I am to you?If I dared see them;?But I bind them into a pillow,?And to know that you think of me?Sustains my spirit?Through the night.
III. SOUVENIR
Harlequin, seeing me gay?You loved me,?For fools need mirth,
O solemn Harlequin!
Tall tragedians make me laugh?Joyously, riotously,?Tall, dark villains, and heroes with blonde hair?Make me laugh uproariously...?(I could elope with a tragedian!)
But you with your clowning, Harlequin,?Brought bony truth too near--
Harlequin, I might have loved you?But I could not make you gay!
IV. THE CURTAIN
I do not fear?You, or me, or death,
There now is nothing left to fear?But this,?This curtain of blackness.
Once I feared you,?And all you thought and felt
And all you said and did:?I feared myself,?And all you made me think and feel?And say and do--
Now I no longer fear?Thinking, feeling, saying, doing,
Nor blankness, silence, apathy, torpor--
I do not fear?You, or me, or death--
I only fear?This curtain of blackness?Which is your absence.
V. THE DREAM
Harlequin comes to me, smiling,?Through the white-shining birch trees?Of the twilight wood.
He has forgiven?My cowardice and hesitations,?Soon I shall sink into his arms?With all the imagined fervour...?Of a thousand dreams.
Why does he come so slowly??There is no longer anything?To mar our meeting...
This must be real?For Harlequin is still clowning,?He waves his arms grotesquely?To make me smile....
Quick, into his arms?With unspent fervour.?Why are the trees all sighing??Look, whispering birches, if you will,?I and my love embrace!
They do not look,?They do not seem to care...
Embrace me, my beloved!?(Can these by passionate kisses??They feel so thin and cool?Like mist.)
The birches shiver?As though the night-wind stirred them.
Can we be dead?
Portrait of a Gentleman
Tower of stone?Rugged and lonely,?My thoughts like ivy?Embrace my memory of you,?Climbing riotously, wantonly,?Till the harsh walls?Are clothed in tender green.
Tower of stone,?Stark walls and a narrow door?Which speak:
"You who are not for me?Are against me,--?If you are mine,?Enter!"
But who would be prisoned?In unknown darkness?
Tower of stone?Rugged and lonely,?I dared not enter and I would not go?Till clasping you?My arms were bruised and torn.
From the Madison Street Police Station
I, John Shepherd, vagrant,?Petition the park commissioners?For wider benches.
My soul has long been reconciled?To the prick of gunny-sack,?(O well-remembered woollen fleeces!)?And rustling vests of newspaper,?And the chill of rubbers on unshod feet,?But to the wasteful burning of dry leaves,?God's shepherd's mattress,?Never!
Descendant of ancient ones?Who tended flocks and watched the midnight sky,?My forebears saw the Eastern star appear?Over Judean hills.
Where do your flocks graze, gentlemen??Are there no sheep or shepherds any more??All day long I sought the flocks?And came by night to a wide, grassy place,?Where I could sit and watch the stars wheel by--?And in the morning some one brought me here.
La Felice
La Felice, by the forest pond?looks through leaves to the Western screen?of Chinese gold that lies beyond?black trees and boughs of golden-green.
The little body of La Felice?weary of everything on earth?has passed from love to love, till peace?and beauty alone have any worth.
So still and deep the water lies,?so fiery-cool, so yellow-clear;?Here beauty sleeps! La Felice cries,?I will give myself to beauty here !"
The mud is smooth and deep, the weeds?beneath her feet are soft and cool,?ripples widen and glistening beads?of bubble rise on the forest pool.
The water reaches to her knee,?now to her thigh, now to her breast,?till like a child all peacefully?does La Felice lie down to rest.
She struggles like a fearful bride?with ecstasy--then La Felice?turns quietly upon her side?and over the sunset pool is peace.
The Journey
Three women walked through the snow
Beneath an empty sky,?And one was blind, and one was old,
And one was I.
Bravely the Blind One led,
I questioned from behind?"Tell me, where do we go?" She said
"Have courage... I am blind!"
We came at last to a cliff,
The Blind One plunged, and was gone--?I looked behind me, stark and stiff
The Old One stood in the dawn.
The deep crevasse was black
Beneath the dawning day,?I could not turn and travel back,
The Old One barred the way.
I could not turn aside,
(To lead, one dare not see)?I think that day I must have died
Such silence is in me.
The Last Illusion
Along the twilight road I met three women,?And they were neither old nor very young;?In her hands each bore what she most cherished,?For they were neither rich, nor very poor.
In the hands of the first woman?I saw white ashes in an urn,?In the hands of the next