Chapter I: WONDER, can the night go by;

Can this shot arrow of travel fly Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky Of a dawned to-morrow, Without ever sleep delivering us From each other, or loosing the dolorous Unfruitful sorrow!

What is it then that you can see That at the window endlessly You watch the red sparks whirl and flee And the night look through? Your presence peering lonelily there Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear To share the train with you.

You hurt my heart-beats' privacy; I wish I could put you away from me; I suffocate in this intimacy, For all that I love you; How I have longed for this night in the train, Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain To God to remove you.

But surely my soul's best dream is still That one night pouring down shall swill Us away in an utter sleep, until We are one, smooth-rounded. Yet closely bitten in to me Is this armour of stiff reluctancy That keeps me impounded.

So, dear love, when another night Pours on us, lift your fingers white And strip me naked, touch me light, Light, light all over. For I ache most earnestly for your touch, Yet I cannot move, however much I would be your lover.

Night after night with a blemish of day Unblown and unblossomed has withered away; Come another night, come a new night, say Will you pluck me apart? Will you open the amorous, aching bud Of my body, and loose the burning flood That would leap to you from my heart?

PERFIDY

HOLLOW rang the house when I knocked on the door, And I lingered on the threshold with my hand Upraised to knock and knock once more: Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor, Hollow re-echoed my heart.

The low-hung lamps stretched down the road With shadows drifting underneath, With a music of soft, melodious feet Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet The low-hung light of her eyes.

The golden lamps down the street went out, The last car trailed the night behind; And I in the darkness wandered about With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt In the dying lamp of my love.

Two brown ponies trotting slowly Stopped at a dim-lit trough to drink: The dark van drummed down the distance slowly; While the city stars so dim and holy Drew nearer to search through the streets.

A hastening car swept shameful past, I saw her hid in the shadow, I saw her step to the curb, and fast Run to the silent door, where last I had stood with my hand uplifted. She clung to the door in her haste to enter, Entered, and quickly cast It shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.

A SPIRITUAL WOMAN

CLOSE your eyes, my love, let me make you blind; They have taught you to see Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, A cunning algebra in the faces of men, And God like geometry Completing his circles, and working cleverly.

I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;
If I can--if any one could.
Then perhaps in the dark you'll have got what you
want to find.
You've discovered so many bits, with your clever
eyes,
And I'm a kaleidoscope
That you shake and shake, and yet it won't come to
your mind.
Now stop carping at me.--But God, how I hate you!
Do you fear I shall swindle you?
Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will
abate you
Somehow?--so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so
cautious, you
Must have me all in your will and your consciousness--
I hate you.

MATING

ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind, The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky, And see, where the budding hazels are thinned, The wild anemones lie In undulating shivers beneath the wind.

Over the blue of the waters ply White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud; And, look you, floating just thereby, The blue-gleamed drake stems proud Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.

In the lustrous gleam of the water, there Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves, Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share The darkness that interweaves The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.

Look now, through the woods where the beech-green
spurts
Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see
A great bay stallion dances, skirts
The bushes sumptuously,
Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.

Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow, What sudden expectation opens you So wide as you watch the catkins blow Their dust from the birch on the blue Lift of the pulsing wind--ah, tell me you know!

Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun
A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all
Us creatures, people and flowers undone,
Lying open under his thrall,
As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you
shun?

Why, I should think that from the earth there fly Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high Bursting globe of dreams, To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.

Do you not hear each morsel thrill With joy at travelling to plant itself within The expectant one, therein to instil New rapture, new shape to win, From the thick of life wake up another will?

Surely, and if that I would spill The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life, From off my brimming measure, to fill You, and flush you rife With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?

A LOVE SONG

REJECT me not if I should say to you I do forget the sounding of your voice, I do forget your eyes that searching through The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice.

Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide Under the pallid moonlight's fingering, I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide My eyes from diligent work, malingering.

Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw The blind to hide the garden, where the moon Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.

And I do lift my aching arms to you, And I do lift my anguished, avid breast, And I do weep for very pain of you, And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest.

And I do toss through the troubled night for you, Dreaming your yielded mouth is given to mine, Feeling your strong breast carry me on into The peace where sleep is stronger even than wine.

BROTHER AND SISTER

THE shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path, Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky, Draws towards the downward slope; some sorrow hath Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares Along her foot-searched way without knowing why She creeps persistent down the sky's long stairs.

Some say they see, though I have never seen, The dead moon heaped within the new moon's arms; For surely the fragile, fine young thing had been Too heavily burdened to mount the heavens so. But my heart stands still, as a new, strong dread alarms Me; might a young girl be heaped with such shadow of woe?

Since Death from the mother moon has pared us down to the quick, And cast us forth like shorn, thin moons, to travel An uncharted way among the myriad thick Strewn stars of silent people, and luminous litter Of lives which sorrows like mischievous dark mice chavel To nought, diminishing each star's glitter,

Since Death has delivered us utterly, naked and white, Since the month of childhood is over, and we stand alone, Since the beloved, faded moon that set us alight Is delivered from us and pays no heed though we moan In sorrow, since we stand in bewilderment, strange And fearful to sally forth down the sky's long range.

We may not cry to her still to sustain us here, We may not hold her shadow back from the dark. Oh, let us here forget, let us take the sheer Unknown that lies before us, bearing the ark Of the covenant onwards where she cannot go. Let us rise and leave her now, she will never know.

AFTER MANY DAYS