Now More Than Ever Divided

BEYOND SORROW

SO IT BEFELL

When the day is long

And full of pain,

I remember

A certain little lane

Where every night,

At half-past seven,

The train flashed by

On its way to heaven.

There you and I,

Watching in the lane,

Dreamed of riding

Inside the train-

Away from the wide

Sun-flowered plain

And tall fields of

High rolling grain.

When night is long

And strangely sane,

I remember

A certain little lane,

Where, on one night-

So it befell-

The train passed heaven

On its way to hell.

WITHOUT GRIEF

Beyond sorrow I have seen a pool

Of clear green waters

Without shadows,

And in it lay my body cool

And quiet as a leaf.

And I have watched it lying there

And seen the sunlight on it-

Now I come back and meet you

Without grief.

I WOULD BE FREE

I would be free of you, my body;

Free of you, too, my little soul.

I am so tired of this mocking hobby,

I am so tired of this imaged whole.

I would be neither base nor godly.

Loathing myself, could I bear then

To see all life and suffering oddly

Twisted and shaped to the needs of men?

I would be neither my own nor another's:

I would not tend for myself, nor hate

The flame of silence that in me smothers

Under the crackling smoke of fate.

God !-what is there for such as in me

Cannot be two and are not whole?

Within the spirit dwells the body,

Upon the body feeds the soul.

CRISIS

Then, being aloof,

To give myself

Was nothing to me:

Only leaves falling

On the roof

Were prophecy.

A worshiper of your gentleness,

Demanding my own aloofness;

Now more than ever divided,

Two of myself, two in you;

Reared as a tower of granite

Bright on the last blue hill,

Crumbled and rooted with wild-flowers

Under the touch of your hand,

Torn as a leaf from a woodvine

Colorfully tossed to the wind,

Caught with dry tendrils of yearning

Close to an ancient wall!

IN RECOMPENSE

Now for the long years when I could not love you,

I bring in recompense this gift of yearning-

A luminous vase uplifted to the sun,

Blue with the shadows of near-twilight.

Here in its full round symmetry of darkness,

Burning with swift curved flashes bright as tears,

I lift it to the lonely lips that knew

Its slow creation, and the wheel of sorrow turning.

Take it with hands like faded petals,

White as the moonlight of our garden;

And for the long years when I could not love you

Drink from its amber-colored night.