ENGLAND seems full of graves to
me,
Full of
graves.
Women I loved and cherished, like my
mother;
Yet I had to
tell them to die.
England seems covered with graves to
me.
Women’s
graves.
Women who were gentle
And who loved me
And whom I loved
And told to
die.
Women with the beautiful eyes of the
old days,
Belief in
love, and sorrow of such belief.
“Hush, my love, then,
hush.
Hush, and die,
my dear!”
Women of the older generation, who
knew
The full doom
of loving and not being able to take back.
Who understood at last what it
was to be told to die.
Now that the graves are made, and
covered;
Now that in
England pansies and such-like grow on the
graves of women;
Now
that in England is silence, where before was a moving
of
soft-skirted women,
Women with eyes that were gentle in olden belief in
love;
Now then that
all their yearning is hushed, and covered
over
with earth.
England seems like one grave to me.
And I, I sit on this high American
desert
With
dark-wrapped Rocky Mountains motionless squatting
around in a ring,
Remembering I told them to die, to sink into the grave
in
England,
The gentle-kneed women.
So now I whisper: Come away,
Come away from the place of graves, come west,
Women,
Women whom I loved and told to
die.
Come back to me
now,
Now the divided
yearning is over;
Now you are husbandless indeed, no more husband to cherish
like
a child
And wrestle tvith for the prize of perfect
love.
No more
children to launch in a world you mistrust.
Now you need know in
part
No longer, or
carry the burden of a man on your heart,
Or the burden of Man writ
large.
Now you are
disemburdened of Man and a man
Come back to me.
Now you are free of the toils of a
would-be-perfect love
Come to me and be
still.
Come back then, you who were wives
and mothers
And
always virgins
Overlooked.
Come back then, mother, my love,
whom I told to die.
It was only I who saw the virgin you
That had no home.
The overlooked virgin,
My
love.
You overlooked her too.
Now that the grave is made of mother
and wife,
Now that
the grave is made and lidded over with
turf.
Come, delicate,
overlooked virgin, come back to me
And be still,
Be glad.
I didn’t tell you to die, for
nothing.
I wanted
the virgin you to be home at last
In my heart.
Inside my innermost
heart,
Where the
virgin in woman comes home to a man.
The homeless virgin
Who never in all her life could
find the way home
To
that difficult innermost place in a man.
Now come west,
come home,
Women
I’ve loved for gentleness,
For the virginal you.
Find the way now that you never
could find in life,
So I told you to die.
Virginal first and last
Is woman.
Now at
this last, my love, my many a love,
You whom I loved for gentleness,
Come home to
me.
They are many, and I loved them,
shall always love them,
And they know it,
The virgins.
And my heart is glad to have them at
last.
Now that the wife and mother and
mistress is buried in earth,
In English earth,
Come home to me, my love,
my loves, my many loves,
Come west to me.
For virgins are not exclusive of
virgins
As wives are
of wives;
And
motherhood is jealous,
But in virginity jealousy does not
enter.
Taos.