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 of 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?