Toward the Gulf Part 8

Hold me so bear-like, take my lips with yours, Bury your face in these my russet tresses, And yet not lose your vision? So I love you, And fear you too. How idle to deny it To you who know I fear you.

Here am I Who answer you what e'er you choose to ask.

You stride about my rooms and open books, And say when did he give you this? You pick His photograph from mantels, dressers, drawl Out of ironic strength, and smile the while: "You did not love this man." You probe my soul About his courts.h.i.+p, how I ran away, How he pursued with gifts from city to city, Threw bouquets to me from the pit, or stood

Like Cleopatra's Giant negro guard, Watchful and waiting at the green-room door.

So, devil, that you are, with needle p.r.i.c.ks, One little question at a time, you've inked The story in my flesh. And now at last You smile and say I killed him. Well, it's true.

But what a death he had! Envy him that.

Your frigid soul can never win the death I gave him.

Listen since you know already All but the subtlest matters. How you laugh!

You know these too? Well, only I can tell them.

First 'twas a piteous thing to see a man So love a woman, see a living thing So love another. Why he could not touch My hand but that his heart went up ten beats.

His eyes would grow as bright as flames, his breath Come short when speaking. When he felt my breast Crush soft around him he would reel and walk Away from me, while I stood like a snake Poised for the strike, as quiet and possessed As a dead breeze. And you can have me wholly, And pet and pat me like a favored child, And let me go my way, while you turn back To what you left for me.

Not so with him: I was all through his blood, had made his flesh My flesh, his nerves, brain, soul all mine at last, Dreams, thoughts, emotions, hungers all my own.

So that he lived two lives, his own and mine, With one poor body, which he gave to me.

Save that he could not give what I pushed back Into his hands to use for me and live My pities, hatreds, loves and pa.s.sions with.

I loved all this and thrived upon it, still I did not love him. Then why marry him?

Why don't you see? It meant so much to him.

And 'twas a little thing for me to do.

His loneliness, his hunger, his great pa.s.sion That showed in his poor eyes, his broken breath, His chivalry, his gifts, his poignant letters, His failing health, why even woman's cruelty Cannot deny such pa.s.sion. Woman's cruelty Takes other means for finding its expression.

And mine found its expression--you have guessed And so I tell you all.

We were married then.

He made a sacrament of our nuptials, Knelt with closed eyes beside the bed, my lips Pressed to his brow and throat. Unveiled my breast And looked, then closed his eyes. He did not take me As man takes his possession, nature's way, In triumph of life, in lightning, no, he came A suppliant, a wors.h.i.+pper, and whispered: "What angel child may lie upon the breast Of this it's angel mother."

Well, you see The tears came in my eyes, for pity of him, Who made so much of what I had to give, And could give easily whether 'twas my rapture To give or to withhold. And in that moment Contempt of which I had been scarcely conscious Lying diffused like dew around my heart Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup To one bright drop of vital power, where He could not see it, scarcely knew that something Gradually drugged the potion that he drank In life with me.

So we were wed a year, And he was with me hourly, till at last I could not breathe for him, while he could breathe No where but where I was. Then the bazaar Was coming on where I was to dance, and he Had long postponed a trip to England where Great interests waited for him, and with kisses I pushed him to his duty, and he went Shame stricken for a duty long postponed, Unable to retort against my words When I said "You must go;" for well he knew He should have gone before. And as for going I pleaded the bazaar and hate of travel, And got him off, and freed myself to breathe.

His life had been too fast, his years too many To stand the strain that came. There was the worry About the business, and the labor over it.

There was the war, and all the fear and turmoil In London for the war. But most of all There was the separation. And his letters!

You've read them, wretch. Such letters never were Of aching loneliness and pining love And hope that lives across three thousand miles, And waits the day to travel them, and fear Of something which may bar the way forever: A storm, a wreck, a submarine and no day Without a letter or a cablegram.

And look at the endearments--oh you fiend To pick their words to pieces like a botanist Who cuts a flower up for his microscope.

And oh myself who let you see these letters.

Why did I do it? Rather why is it You master me, even as I mastered him?

At last he finished, got his pa.s.sage back.

He had been gone three months. And all these letters Showed how he starved for me, and scarce could wait To take me in his arms again, would choke With fast and heavy feeding.

Well, you see The contempt I spoke of which lay long diffused Like dew around my heart, and which at once Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup Grew brighter, bitterer, for this obvious hunger, This thirst which could not wait, the piteous trembling.

And all the while it seemed he thought his love Grew sacreder as it grew uncontrolled, And marked by trembling, choking, tears and sighs.

This is not love which should be, has no use In this or any world. And as for me I could not stand it longer. And I thought Of what was best to do: if 'twas not best To kill him as the queen bee kills the mate In rapture's own excess.

Then he arrived.

I went to meet him in the car, pretended The feed pipe broke while I was on the way.

I was not at the station when he came.

I got back to the house and found him gone.

He had run through the rooms calling my name, So Mary told me. Then he went around From place to place, wherever in the village He thought to find me.

Soon I heard his steps, The key in the door, his winded breath, his call, His running, stumbling up the stairs, while I Stood silent as a shadow in our room, My round bright eyes grown brighter for the light His life was feeding them. And then he stood Breathless and trembling in the door-way, stood Transfixed with ecstacy, then rushed and caught me And broke into loud tears.

It had to end.

One or the other of us had to die.

I could not die but by a violence, And he could die by love alone, and love I gave him to his death.

Why tell you details And ways with which I maddened him, and whipped The energies of love? You have extracted The secret in the main, that 'twas from love He came to death. His life had been too fast, His years too many for the daily rapture I gave him after three months' separation.

And so he died one morning, made me free Of nothing but his presence in the flesh.

His love is on me yet, and its effect.

And now you're here to slave me differently-- No soul is ever free.

HEAVEN IS BUT THE HOUR

Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain, Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.

And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold The guarded heart against excess of rain.

Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays With paints and clays, And strings in many keys-- Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood Of sun-s.h.i.+ne where there is no breeze.

So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood, Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite-- Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.

From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair, Eyes, lips and hands and voice, As if the stored up thought From the earth sphere Had given down the being of your choice Conjured by the dream long sought.

For you have moved in madness, rapture, wrath In and out of the path Drawn by the dream of a face.

You have been watched, as star-men watch a star That leaves its way, returns and leaves its way, Until the exploring watchers find, can trace A hidden star beyond their sight, whose sway Draws the erratic star so long observed-- So have you wandered, swerved.

Always pursued and lost, Sometimes half found, half-faced, Such years we waste With the almost: The lips flower pressed like buds to hold Guarded the heart of the flower, But over them eyes not hued as the Dream foretold.

Or to find the lips too rich and the dower Of eyes all gaiety Where wisdom scarce can be.

Or to find the eyes, but to find offence In fingers where the sense Falters with colors, strings, Not touching with closed eyes, out of an immanence Of flame and wings.

Or to find the light, but to find it set behind An eye which is not your dream, nor the shadow thereof, As it were your lamp in a stranger's window.

And so almost to find In the great weariness of love.

Now this is the tragedy: If the Idea did not move Somewhere in the realm of Love, Clothing itself in flesh at last for you to see, You could scarcely follow the gleam.

And the tragedy is when Life has made you over, And denied you, and dulled your dream, And you no longer count the cost, Nor the past lament, You are sitting oblivious of your discontent Beside the Almost-- And then the face appears Evoked from the Idea by your dead desire, And blinds and burns you like fire.

And you sit there without tears, Though thinking it has come to kill you, or mock your youth With its half of the truth.

A beach as yellow as gold Daisied with tents for a lovely mile.

And a sea that edges and walls the sand with blue, Matching the heaven without a seam, Save for the threads of foam that hold With st.i.tches the canopy rare as the tile Of old Damascus. And O the wind Which roars to the roaring water brightened By the beating wings of the sun!

And here I walk, not seeking the Dream, As men walk absent of heart or mind Who have no wish for a sorrow lightened Since all things now seem lost or won.

And here it is that your face appears!