Aline Kilmer. Diagonals. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Diagonals

By Aline Kilmer


From “Novelette” NOW this is the strangest thing since the world began:
You tell me that you are a bad and a violent man;
But I see only
A child, little and lonely,
Crying with fright in a desolate place apart.	5

While I am known as chaste and reasonably good;
But you are blind to my virtuous womanhood:
Somehow you see,
Dragged out of the depths of me,
The wanton that every women hides in her heart.	10