A Woman of Thirty | Page 6

there is no worship nor any music,
Let incense be a curved
smile
On lips that remember,
And candles, notes of laughter
In
empty dusk.
Above,
A coloured window slowly turns
Black to the night.
VII. RUINS
Temples have fallen
Before today,
Stones are ever loosening their
hold
One on another...
You blocks of marble, sleeping in the sun,
Can you remember
chiming bells
And incense?
Now there is only silence,
Even the winged stones of archways

Sleep in peace.
Candles
Silence is but the golden frame

That holds your face,
My thoughts, like unblown candle-flame
In a holy place
Surround you. From this secret shrine
Somewhere apart
Do you not feel my candles shine
Upon your heart?
Winter Night
The I that does not love you
I have kept hidden away
In the dark.
(I never dreamed
There was a You
That does not love me!)
Tonight they met.
I hear their words
Falling like icicles
Upon me...
I am frozen in
terror...
Have they killed the You
That Loves me?
Beloved, can you hear me
Through the bitter sound
Of icicles
falling?
Can you see me from behind
Your frozen eyes?
Last Days
I
Shall I pretend
These days are just like other days?
One cannot
spend
Every day for seven weeks
Saying good-bye.
So when I must
I speak of your departure casually
As though it
were a hundred years away;
As Youth is wont to say:
"Sometime
we all must die!"
II
We talk of all the happy things we have done,
We pass them in
review,
"Do you remember?" is often on our lips.

One 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