Reminder

    Do you remember
How night after night swept level and low
Overhead, at home, and had not one star,
Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go
    Forth to her field of November.

    And you remember,
How towards the north a red blot on the sky
Burns like a blotch of anxiety
Over the forges, and small flames ply
    Like ghosts the shadow of the ember.

    Those were the days
When it was awful autumn to me,
When only there glowed on the dark of the sky
The red reflection of her agony,
    My beloved smelting down in the blaze

    Of death--my dearest
Love who had borne, and was now leaving me.
And I at the foot of her cross did suffer
    My own gethsemane.

    So I came to you,
And twice, after great kisses, I saw
The rim of the moon divinely rise
And strive to detach herself from the raw
    Blackened edge of the skies.

    Strive to escape;
With her whiteness revealing my sunken world
Tall and loftily shadowed. But the moon
Never magnolia-like unfurled
    Her white, her lamp-like shape.

    For you told me no,
And bade me not to ask for the dour
Communion, offering--"a better thing."
So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour
    Feeling your fingers go

    Like a rhythmic breeze
Over my hair, and tracing my brows,
Till I knew you not from a little wind:
--I wonder now if God allows
    Us only one moment his keys.

    If only then
You could have unlocked the moon on the night,
And I baptized myself in the light
Of your love; we both have entered then the white
    Pure passion, and never again.

    I wonder if only
You had taken me then, how different
Life would have been: should I have spent
Myself in waste, and you have bent
    Your pride, through being lonely?

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...