Chapter II: Part II: Duet

(_I sing with myself_)

Out of my sorrow
I’ll build a stair,
And every to-morrow
Will climb to me there--

_With ashes of yesterday
In its hair_.

My fortune is made
Of a stab in the side,
My debts are paid
In pennies of pride--

_Little red coins
In a heart I hide_.

The stones that I eat
Are ripe for my needs,
My cup is complete
With the dregs of deeds--

_Clear are the notes
Of my broken reeds_.

I carry my pack
Of aches and stings,
Light with the lack
Of all good things--

_But not on my back,
Because of my wings_!

I’ll be your Epitaph

Over your dear dead heart I’ll lift
As blithely as a bough,
Saying, “Here lies the cruel song,
Cruelly quiet now.”

I’ll say, “Here lies the lying sword,
Still dripping with my truth;
Here lies the woven sheath I made,
Embroidered with my youth.”

I’ll sing, “Here lies, here lies, here lies--”
Ah, rust in peace below!
Passers will wonder at my words,
But your dark dust will know.

Third Floor Landing

A stranger knocked upon your door,
A stranger-voice cried out, “Come in!”
Beyond, a sofa, plump and red,
Crouched where a carven chest had been.

I craned to see the things I knew
Could not be there, since you were gone--
Oh twilight of the household gods,
Dishonored altars where they shone!

I saw instead a gilded glimpse
Of trivial things that seemed to shout
A trivial welcome from the wall;
The door swung to and shut me out.

Only the landing was unchanged,
The closed door donned a friendly air;
I had no quarrel with my place,
I was at home upon the stair.

Therapy

There is a way
Of healing love with love,
They say.
But I say no!
What! shall pain comfort pain,
Fever calm fever,
Woe minister to woe?

Shall tear, remembering,
Wash cool remembering tear?
Shall scar play host to scar,
Loneliness shelter loneliness;
And is forgetting here?

Poor patch-work of the heart,
This healing love with love;
Binding the wound to wound,
The smart to smart!
Grafting the dream upon the other dream
As a gardener grafts tree to tree,
And both from the same wild root
Bearing their bitter fruit:
The new dream dreaming in the old,
The old dream in the new--
And neither dreaming true.

Is there, I wonder,
A heaven above the heaven we knew?
And is there under
Our dream’s stern waking
A sterner hell?
And shall we know them too?

One thing I know:
Of an unreckoned giving that is a taking,
A wrong, a robbery!
Perhaps you so wronged me;
I so robbed you.

Therapy--therapy--
I am content to feel
This health of heart that will not heal;
I am content to think
That I am one with hunger,
Given to thirst,
And that I need not eat nor drink.
I am full-nourished so.

They say
There is a way
Of healing love with love.
But I say no!

* * *

Beyond the sands
Of all they say
I see you still,
Holding toward me those eager hands
I could not fill;
My hands still curve and close,
Deeming they hoard
The shining things you poured
That I let spill.

Over us lift the years--
Hill upon hill
Of days that wither into night,
And nights that ache to day;
Reiterated emptiness of shade and light
Crowding the empty way.

Up to this sullen therapy
Of time,
Shall we two climb?

* * *

I am too tired to climb;
Nor would I go
So far from the loved overthrow.
Climb you to healing! while I keep
Vigil in this lost place
A little while;
Weep
If I choose,
The honest abject tear,
Let the grief break and pour;
Gather the shadows comfortably near,
And sleep as children sleep.

A little little while!
To wake and smile,
Indifferent to the dark,
Holding to me my one-time joy
As children clutch an ancient battered toy
They will not have renewed;
Smile, and lie closer to a loss
That tunes itself to gain,
(Inexorable lullaby),
Lie softer, safer,
Pillowed on fortitude--
Drowsy--
Beneath my pain.

Witch!

Ashes of me,
Whirl in the fires I may not name.
Lick, lovely flame!

Will the fagot not burn?
Throw on the tired broom
Stabled still in my room.

I have ridden wide and well.
Shall I say with whom?
(Stop the town bell!)

Listen now,
Listen now if you dare:
I have lain with hope
Under the dreadful bough,
I have suckled Judas’ rope
As it swung on the air--

Go find the silver pieces in the moon.
I hid them there.

Deep Sea Fishing

Sometimes I cast my longing like a line,
Watch it sink deep and deeper in the blue
Immoderate waters that are dreams of you,
Flooding the parched land that is sleep of mine.
Impassively I float the pale hours through,
With quiet eyes upon the quivering twine,
Aware of lurking shapes that give no sign
Of rising, though they move as fishes do.

Your hands, your hands, a thousand multiplied,
Cool, slim, and wary, darting to and fro,
For every touch of yours I knew, a hand!
Then breaks the line along the failing tide,
I lean--to drown among them as they go--
Knowing I may not drown on waking sand!

Onlooker

I urged my will against my mind,
My mind shook like a rocking wall
But did not fall;
My will was like a wind-blown tree;
And neither knew the victory.

I hurled my mind against my will;
They did not break or bend or spill:
But in my heart the song grew still.

Affinity

Her mouth was shaped to happy tunes
That flying, she let fall,
But when his silence mended them
She could not sing at all.

She could not fly without her tunes,
They were her only wings,
But there were pleasant ways to walk
Among sure-footed things.

She walks content, her hand in his;
But neither of them sings.

Cantares

I

Sweet, my sweet!
Was I a fool to show you the sky--
Then strap my wings to your feet?

II

I lied--trusting you knew
I could not lie to you.

Beloved friend, I lied, and am forgiven: but I
Cannot forgive that you believed my lie!

III

Suffer the moths to singe their wings
At your proud prodigal light
All night!

But you, but you,
Singeing your flame
At their frail wings--
Ah shame!

IV

Close not the door, dear love,--he cried--
I stand and wait; ah, throw it wide!
Wherefore,--she said--_and you inside_?

She says, being forbidden:

And was there not a king somewhere who said:
“Back, waves! I do command you!” I forget
His name, beloved, or his race, and yet
I know the story and am comforted.
The tides will rise, are rising--see, they spread
About your robes, your ermine will be wet,
Your velvet shoes, your dear dear feet! Ah let
Me warn you, sir, the waves will reach your head!

My king, my kingly love, how shall we stay
The bold broad lifting of this lovely sea?
What is the master word that we must say
To bring these roaring waters to the knee?
The other king went scampering away!
Will you so do? Or will you drown with me?

Little Lover

You made your little lover kind,
And quick of word and kiss and tear,
And everything a woman craves;
You could not make him big, my dear.

And so you made your great self small,
As only a great woman can,
Nor cared a jot; but ah, he knew
And cared a lot, the little man.

He knew and hated you at last.
Let me be fair! He left you then.
That one big generous thing he did:
Left you to grieve to heights again.

Kleptomaniac

She stole his eyes because they shone,
Stole the good things they looked upon;
They were no brighter than her own.

She stole his mouth--her own was fair--
She stole his words, his songs, his prayer;
His kisses too, since they were there.

She stole the journeys of his heart--
Her own, their very counterpart--
His seas and sails, his course and chart.

She stole his strength so fierce and true,
Perhaps for something brave to do;
Wept at his weakness, stole that too.

But she was caught one early morn!
She stood red-handed and forlorn,
And stole his anger and his scorn.

Upon his knee she laid her head,
Refusing to be comforted;
“Unkind--unkind--” was all she said.

Denied she stole; confessed she did;
Glad of such plunder to be rid--
Clutching the place where it was hid.

As he forgave she snatched his soul;
She did not want it, but she stole.

To a Song of Sappho discovered in Egypt

_And Sappho’s flowers, so few,
But roses all._
MELEAGER.

Jonah wept within the whale;
But you have sung these centuries
Under the brown banks of the Nile
Within a dead dried crocodile:
So fares the learned tale.

When they embalmed the sacred beast
The Sapphic scroll was white and strong
To wrap the spices that were needed,
Its song unheard, its word unheeded
By crocodile or priest.

The song you sang on Lesbos when
Atthis was kind, or Mica sad;
The startled whale spewed Jonah wide,
From out the monster mummified
Your roses sing again.

Your roses! from the seven strands
Of the small harp whereon they grew;
The holy beast has had his pleasure,
His bellyful of Attic measure
Under the desert sands.

Along strange winds your petals blew
In singing fragments, roses all;
The air is heavy on the Nile,
The drowsy gods drowse on the while
As gods are wont to do.

Hyacinths

_Leda, they say, once found an egg
Hidden under hyacinths_ ...

... _much whiter than an egg_ ...

SAPPHO

Did she pluck it from the curly flowers;
Make a nest
Of her long light hair?

Or did she slip the white thing in her breast,
As smooth, as fair?
Lie smiling through the hours?
(Proudly aware
Of tiny flutterings,
Knowing well
What she guarded there,
Hidden within the shell!)

Did she dream of powerful white wings
That beat upon her like a milky tide--
Again--again--?
Did she swoon beneath a dream of hyacinths?

And then,
Did the shell open wide
Under her crying kiss?

I with children at my side,
Ponder so on this.

The Story as I understand It

I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples,
And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss
Its first wise word.
I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword
Followed her with hot holy eyes,
Remembering the red curve of her kiss
As she passed out of Paradise.

See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain,
Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain,
And how the serpent writhes away
From man to this far day.
An angel is a lovely lonely thing
Of boundless wing.
They are the banished ones that grieve;
Not Eve!

Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride,
Nor Adam walking there at her white side--
A little heavily perhaps,
Because of things scarce known,
As yet not named:
New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone,
Fears not yet fears--
And out beyond, the world untamed
Of which to make
Their surer paradise of tears!

But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness
Of laws, forgotten now,
Concerning fruit and flowers,
That none shall ever bless
Or break;
And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough
That blossoms whimpering
Through a divine monotony
Of spring on spring.

Two Passionate Ones Part

Why stamp the sovereign fires out?
They would have burned themselves away,
Finally flickered red to gray.

Had you but let them lift and roar,
Scorch and consume you, whirl and dart,
Ember on ember as heart on heart!

What had divided the fiery dust,
Ashes of you, and ashes of you?
Pity, pity, impatient two!

Now you go reeling out of love--
Look, as you stumble on alone:
This is the way you would have gone!

Why not have walked it hand in hand,
One-time lovers and all-time friends?
Love has a hundred gentle ends.

Ends--and beyonds--oh ghosts of flames
That never lived, that never died,
Bitter and lean, unsatisfied--

These are the fires shall warm you now,
Sit and dream at them, dream and sigh;
These are the dead that cannot die.

Fires are meant to leap and fade.
Who are you to rule otherwise,
Monarchs with madness in your eyes?

Who are you to challenge change?
What, would you carve love’s wings in stone?
Fling them your sky! Their course is their own!

Grieving impetuous passionate two--
Here was a feast on the white cloth spread,
Love was the wine, and liking the bread.

You drank and drank, but you ate no crumb;
Love was the wine, but ah, the bread,
Had you dipped it deep in the cup instead.

Pale-lipped lovers that taste the lees,
Dull, undrinkable, stale and flat,
How the good crust had sweetened these--
Pity you never thought of that!

This City Wind

This city wind with puny strength to crawl
The town’s wet streets, and furtively to tease
Loose doors and windows, making sport of these,
Comes bruised from battered jetty and sea-wall;
Comes as one limping from a sailor’s brawl,
Seeking the comfort of tall roofs and trees,
With tales of dying on disastrous seas--
This city wind that is not wind at all.

Because an area-door is left ajar,
Clapping its fretful word of autumn storm,
I sense these distant tumults, half-asleep,
I know ships founder where black waters are.
What of home-bodies, lying safe and warm,
Drowning in dreams as bitter and as deep?