Interlude

I know of all the words I speak or write, Precious and woven of a vibrant sound, None ever snares your faith, intrigues you quite, Or sends you soaring from the solid ground. You are the level-headed lover who Can match my fever while the kisses last, But you are never shaken through and through; Your roots are firm after the storm has passed. I shall know nights of tossing in my sleep Fondling a hollow where a head should lie; But you a calm review, no tears to weep, No wounds to dress, no futile breaths to sigh. Ever this was the way of wind with flame: To harry it, then leave swift as it came.

Now you are gone, and with your unreturning goes All I had thought in spite of you would stay; Now draws forever to its unawakening close The beauty of the bright bandanna’d day. Now sift in ombrous flakes and revolutions slow My dreams descending from my heady sky. The balm I kept to cool my grief in (leaves of snow) Now melts, with your departure flowing by. I knew, indeed, the straight unswerving track the sun Took to your face (as other ecstasies) Yet I had thought some faith to me in them; they run From me to you as fly to honey, bees. Avid, to leave me neither fevered joy nor ache, Only of soul and body vast unrest. Sun, moon, and stars should be enough; why must you take The feeling of the heart out of the breast? Now I who dreamed before I died to shoot one shaft Of courage from a warped and crooked bow, Stand utterly forsaken, stripped of that small craft I had, watching with you all prowess go.

Let us not turn for this aside to die, Crying a lover may not be a friend. Our grief is vast enough without that lie; All stories may not boast a happy end. Love was a flower, sweet, and flowers fade; Love was a fairy tale; these have their close. The endless chronicle was never made, Nor, save in dreams, the ever-scented rose. Seeing them dim in passion’s diadem, Our rubies that were bright that now are dull, Let them not fade without their requiem, How they were red one time and beautiful, And how the heart where once a ruby bled May live, yet bear that mark till it is dead.

Yea, I have put thee from me utterly, And they who plead thy cause do plead in vain; Window and door are bolted, never key From any ore shall cozen them again. This is my regal justice: banishment, That those who please me now may read and see How self-sustained I am, with what content I thrive alike on love or treachery. God, Thou hast Christ, they say, at Thy right hand; Close by Thy left Michael is straight and leal; Around Thy throne the chanting elders stand, And on the earth Thy feudal millions kneel. Criest Thou never, Lord, above their song: “But Lucifer was tall, his wings were long?”

Pity me, I said; But you cried, Pity you; And suddenly I saw Higher than my own grief grew. I saw a tree of woe so tall, So deeply boughed with grief, That matched with it my bitter plant Was dwarfed into a leaf.

Your love to me was like an unread book, Bright-backed, with smooth white pages yet unslit; Fondly as a lover, foolishly, I took It from its shelf one day and opened it. Here shall I read, I thought, beauty and grace, The soul’s most high and awful poetry:— Alas for lovers and the faith they place In love, alas for you, alas for me. I have but read a page or two at most, The most my horror-blinded eyes may read. I find here but a windy tapering ghost Where I sought flesh gifted to ache and bleed. Yet back you go, though counterfeit you be. I love bright books even when they fail me.

Breast under breast when you shall lie With him who in my place Bends over you with flashing eye And ever nearing face; Hand fast in hand when you shall tread With him the springing ways Of love from me inherited After my little phase; Be not surprised if suddenly The couch or air confound Your ravished ears upbraidingly, And silence turn to sound. But never let it trouble you, Or cost you one caress; Ghosts are soon sent with a word or two Back to their loneliness.

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching; And bit by bit to the smallest part That organ will be breaking. Never love with all your mind, It only ends in fretting; In musing on sweet joys behind, Too poignant for forgetting. Never love with all your soul, For such there is no ending, Though a mind that frets may find control, And a shattered heart find mending. Give but a grain of the heart’s rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed, And find another lover.

Nothing endures, Not even love, Though the warm heart purrs Of the length thereof. Though beauty wax, Yet shall it wane; Time lays a tax On the subtlest brain. Let the blood riot, Give it its will; It shall grow quiet, It shall grow still. Nirvana gapes For all things given; Nothing escapes, Love not even.

This wound will be effaced as others have, This scar recede into oblivion, Leaving the skin immaculate and suave, With none to guess the thing they gaze upon. After a decent show of mourning I, As once I ever was, shall be as free To look on love with calm unfaltering eye, And marvel that such fools as lovers be. These are brave words from one who like a child Cuts dazzling arabesques on summer ice That, kissed by sun, begins to crack and thaw; The old assurance dies, only the wild Desire to live goes on; any device Compels its frantic grasp, even a straw.

One day I told my love my heart, Disclosed it out and in; I let her read the ill-writ chart Small with virtue, big with sin. I took it from the hidden socket Where it was wont to grieve; “I’ll turn it,” I said, “into a locket, Or a bright band for your sleeve.” I let her hold the naked thing No one had seen before; And had she willed, her hand might wring It dry and drop it to the floor. It was a gentle thing she did, The wisest and the best; “The proper place for a heart,” she said, “Is back in the sheltering breast.”

I lay in silence at her side, My heart’s and spirit’s choice; For we had said harsh things and cried On love in a bitter voice. We lay and watched two points in space, Pricked in heaven, faint and far. They seemed so near, but who could trace That width between star and star? We lay and watched, and suddenly There was a streak of light, And where were two, the eye might see But one star in the night. My hand stole out, her hand crept near, Grief was a splintered spar; Two fused in one there, did you hear Us claiming kinship, star?

“Bon soir, monsieur,” they called to me; And, “Venez voir nos femmes.” “Bon soir, mesdames,” they got from me, And, “J’ai une meilleure dame.” “To meet strange lips and foreign eyes I did not cross the foam, I have a dearer, fairer prize Who waits for me at home.” “Her eyes are browner, lips more red Than any lady’s light; ’Twould grieve her heart and droop her head If I failed her tonight.” “Bon soir, mesdames; que Dieu vous garde; And catch this coin I throw; The ways of life are bleak and hard, Ladies, I think you know.” A bright and crooked street it gleamed With light and laughter filled; All night the warm wine frothed and streamed While souls were stripped and killed.

Stern legislation of a Persian hand Upon my heart, Love, strict Medean writ, Must till the end of time and me command Obeisance from him who fostered it. All other codes may hide their littlest flaw Toward which the hopeful prisoner may kneel; I come of those who once they write a law Do barricade themselves against appeal. So stand I now condemned by mine own tort; Extenuations? There is none to plead. I am my own most ultimate resort; There is no pardon for the stricken Mede. I turn to go, half valiant, half absurd, To perish on a promise, die on a word.

No word upon the boarded page That once in praise I spoke, Would I in bitterness and rage, Had I the power, revoke. Take them and bind them to your heart, With ribbon or with rue. An end arrives to all we start; I write no more of you. Go then, adhere to the vows you make Out of a haughty heart; No more to tremble for my sake Nor writhe beneath the smart Of hearing on an alien tongue Tolled lightly and in play, The bell by which our lives were rung, The bell we break today. Love ever was the brightest dream My pen might seize upon; Think not I shall renounce the theme Now that the dream is done. We are put by, but not the Bow, The Arrows, and the Dove. Though you and I go down, still glow The armaments of love. The essence shines devoid of form, Passion plucked of its sting, The Holy Rose that hides no worm, The Everlasting Thing. Though loud I cry on Venus’ name To heal me and subdue The rising tide, the raging flame, I write no more of you. Rare was the poem we began (We called it that!) to live, And for a while the measures ran With all the heart could give. But, oh, the golden vein was thin, Early the dark cock crew; The heart cried out (love’s muezzin): I write no more of you.