White Valentine

Since you are dead and I am gone,

And that old house we knew is known

Only to strangers, I will cut

A paper heart for you, and put

A picture in its center. Faint

And delicate and small, I'll paint

Two figures there, and they will be

A miniature of you and me.

We're by my long gold mirror; bright

The bitter afternoon's cold light

Comes thinly through the windowpane

And strikes across us. A fine skein

Of leafless boughs and twigs is drawn

Over the sky; on the white lawn,

Their shadows, in an intricate net,

Are with a still precision set.

It's winter, and we are at home

Together in my pale blue room.

There you, a gaunt boy, gravely stand,

Sedately moving your thin hand.

I am the tall child in the chair,

Letting you brush my long light hair.

Upon this shape of brittle lace

And gentle tints, there is no place

For the crude color of the heart.

This is a pastel day, apart

From all the later sombre years,

The spite, mistrust, the sullen tears

And sad; from the crouched attitudes

Of separate terrors, from the feuds,

Shameful and harsh, between a brother

And sister, close to one another,

But cleaved as woman and as man;

From all their honored daily plan,

That was the falsely mutual life

Of two not husband and not wife,

Caught frantic in a marriage-mesh,

Which was of blood but not of flesh -

All that's their book, closed now forever,

This but a picture for the cover.

So, on my fragile valentine,

Let not one stain fall from that vine

Which, in the temples and the wrists,

Distorted, deviously twists;

Not one drop spatter from that flood

Which is the dense and scalding blood.

Here, decorated in white lace,

We share an instant all of grace,

And tenderness, and innocence.

Briefly, but ever, here relents

All taut devotion. On this heart

We live, released in trivial art,

Lovely, naive. It's winter weather,

And we are in my room together,

Amused, at peace; I in my chair,

You standing, brushing my long hair.