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From “Perennials”
I WILL you not stay away?—and let me be | |
| Alone with you? Or must you always throw | |
| The present with its infidelity | |
| In front of my too weary eyes, and so | |
| Smear with facts the frail pastel that I | 5 |
| Have made of all our past, in which I live | |
| With you again, again the world defy | |
| And all the cynics who could not forgive | |
| A happiness they could not understand? | |
| O love, a bridge stencilled with lies I cross | 10 |
| To yesterday; I find our promised land | |
| Again, and you. I do not feel a loss: | |
| If you but stay away, my You will be | |
| Clearer than any actuality. | |
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II How can I offer you the dull, frayed song | 15 |
| Of love I know? Each word would stumble on | |
| A memory; and I should see a long | |
| Blurred line of faces grimacing upon | |
| A musty curtain of the past…. Ah, no…. | |
| Let me be silent…. Words would only sound | 20 |
| A monotone: a toxic, cloying flow | |
| Of echoes would sift through, and eddy round | |
| My voice, and all the rapture that I feel | |
| Would turn into a harlequin and steal | |
| Away beneath the vivid, measured hum | 25 |
| Of mockery. Ah, dearest, may there come | |
| An ecstasy of stillness in each day, | |
| That you may sense the thoughts I dare not say! | |
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