| |
(From Poems, 1919)
FOR what have you sought my love, | |
| Along those flashing wastes of passion? | |
| Who move so wearily as the dawn’s unwilling step | |
| Over-stamped in ruins of unlimited woe. | |
| O what crucifix you, tortured | 5 |
| Into nailing yourself against? | |
| That your arms are become so attenuate | |
| As those stark supplicating limbs of nightmare. | |
| I wonder, have you assaulted life in darkness | |
| And whispering | 10 |
| I need you so! oh let me— | |
| Yet when the spear entering, nailing you | |
| Into frantic submission, | |
| You crying out from the very center nerve | |
| Of such ecstasy, I have fear! | 15 |
| Since you selling then into bondage | |
| What you might surmise only— | |
| And for the witchery of moments. | |
| Since you denying of yourself | |
| More than you could have known | 20 |
| Before self-betrayal. | |
| And all in order to induce | |
| Those scarlet wings of appalling lips | |
| To glisten, close, across your mouth. | |
| Yet when this tease of pleasure | 25 |
| Titillating curious truth-stained exclamations out of you | |
| And their sense languishing mateless unanswered along the air— | |
| Ah, then you turning to regard | |
| The gracious youth of your sleeping love | |
| Alongside of your waking, ageless, heart. | 30 |
| |
