Quenched

Christine Turner Curtis

All night she tore at the soft skeins of love,
The pitiless bright skeins of remembering-
Wild cherry bloom, a violet night of spring,
A voice, and brook-clear eyes; no other thing.
Yet she was bound, she had no wit to loose
Those twirled and silken strands, that choking noose.
She lay burnt out as after a long drouth,
The small fires crisping at her breast, her mouth.

And then she saw the daybreak, high above
The city roofs, and-blessed sight-the snow
Petaling down, monotonous and slow,
The great snow-needles stitching row on row
The red house-fronts. Then, like a flame wind-drawn,
She rose, and plunged into the snowy dawn.