A Woman of Thirty Part 3

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 pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.cious bed Fashioned for love and sleep The Autumn goldenrod lies dead, The maple-leaves lie deep.

III. Studies and Designs

A j.a.panese 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 pa.s.sionate 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 sh.o.r.e 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)

l.u.s.t 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 s.p.a.ce 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!