Look! We Have Come Through! | Page 5

me so, and love me??My feet have no hold, you take the sky from above me."_
"My dear, the night is soft and eternal, no doubt?You love it!"--_"It is dark, it kills me, I am put out."_
"My dear, when you cross the street in the sunshine,
surely?Your own small night goes with you. Why treat
it so poorly?"
_"No, no, I dance in the sun, I'm a thing of life--"_?"Even then it is dark behind you. Turn round,
my wife."
_"No, how cruel you are, you people the sunshine?With shadows!"_--"With yours I people the?sunshine, yours and mine--"
"In the darkness we all are gone, we are gone
with the trees?And the restless river;--we are lost and gone
with all these."
_"But I am myself, I have nothing to do with these."_?"Come back to bed, let us sleep on our mysteries.
"Come to me here, and lay your body by mine,?And I will be all the shadow, you the shine.
"Come, you are cold, the night has frightened you.?Hark at the river! It pants as it hurries through
"The pine-woods. How I love them so, in their
mystery of not-to-be."?_"--But let me be myself, not a river or a tree."_
"Kiss me! How cold you are!--Your little breasts?Are bubbles of ice. Kiss me!--You know how
it rests
"One to be quenched, to be given up, to be gone
in the dark;?To be blown out, to let night dowse the spark.
"But never mind, my love. Nothing matters,
save sleep;?Save you, and me, and sleep; all the rest will
keep."
MUTILATION
A THICK mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat.?I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up.?Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.
I hold the night in horror;?I dare not turn round.
To-night I have left her alone.?They would have it I have left her for ever.
Oh my God, how it aches?Where she is cut off from me!
Perhaps she will go back to England.?Perhaps she will go back,?Perhaps we are parted for ever.
If I go on walking through the whole breadth of
Germany?I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.
Over there is Russia--Austria, Switzerland, France,
in a circle!?I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.
It aches in me.?What is England or France, far off,?But a name she might take??I don't mind this continent stretching, the sea far
away;?It aches in me for her?Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching;?Not even longing,?It is only agony.
A cripple!?Oh God, to be mutilated!?To be a cripple!
And if I never see her again?
I think, if they told me so?I could convulse the heavens with my horror.?I think I could alter the frame of things in my
agony.?I think I could break the System with my heart.?I think, in my convulsion, the skies would break.
She too suffers.?But who could compel her, if she chose me against
them all??She has not chosen me finally, she suspends her
choice.?Night folk, Tuatha De Danaan, dark Gods, govern
her sleep,?Magnificent ghosts of the darkness, carry off her
decision in sleep,?Leave her no choice, make her lapse me-ward,
make her,?Oh Gods of the living Darkness, powers of Night.
WOLFRATSHAUSEN
_HUMILIATION_
I HAVE been so innerly proud, and so long alone,?Do not leave me, or I shall break.?Do not leave me.
What should I do if you were gone again?So soon??What should I look for??Where should I go??What should I be, I myself,?"I"??What would it mean, this?I?
Do not leave me.
What should I think of death??If I died, it would not be you:?It would be simply the same?Lack of you.?The same want, life or death,?Unfulfilment,?The same insanity of space?You not there for me.
Think, I daren't die?For fear of the lack in death.?And I daren't live.
Unless there were a morphine or a drug.
I would bear the pain.?But always, strong, unremitting?It would make me not me.?The thing with my body that would go on
living?Would not be me.?Neither life nor death could help.
Think, I couldn't look towards death?Nor towards the future:?Only not look.?Only myself?Stand still and bind and blind myself.
God, that I have no choice!?That my own fulfilment is up against me?Timelessly!?The burden of self-accomplishment!?The charge of fulfilment!?And God, that she is _necessary!_?_Necessary,_ and I have no choice!
Do not leave me.
_A YOUNG WIFE_
THE pain of loving you?Is almost more than I can bear.
I walk in fear of you.?The darkness starts up where?You stand, and the night comes through?Your eyes when you look at me.
Ah never before did I see?The shadows that live in the sun!
Now every tall glad tree?Turns round its back to the sun?And looks down on the ground, to see?The shadow it used to shun.
At the foot of each glowing thing?A night lies looking up.
Oh, and I want to sing?And dance, but I can't lift up?My eyes from the shadows: dark?They lie spilt round the cup.
What is it?--Hark?The faint fine seethe in the air!
Like the seething sound in a shell!?It is death still seething where?The wild-flower shakes its bell?And the sky lark twinkles blue--
The pain of loving you?Is almost more than I can bear.
_GREEN_
THE dawn