FLOODGATES

Dear, try to understand.

I wish that you could see,

Now I am free

Of all the fret and torment,

The little daily miseries of love,

That I can take you in my arms at night

With a quick tenderness,

With a new delight,

Yet go my way untroubled if I do not find you,

Forgetting in my zest for many things

There is a you.

I wonder if you can ever understand?

Do you not know

That I would go

Forth now to meet life’s great adventuring

Alone?

I would be unloosed from why and wherefore,

I would not be stayed

By sorrowing or rejoicing,

Even the enchantment of your nearness,

Or your touch at night

Is powerless any more

To come between my loneliness and me.

They say that prisoners grow to love their chains,

So now, after long years of bitter reaching out,

Of crying to the winds

And clasping only shadows of my dreaming,

I love my torment.

We are such old companions,

Loneliness and I!

We have learned to ask but little of each other;

There is no longer any turning away

With hurt, averted eyes;

So, Beloved,

Let me keep my loneliness for friend,

The only friend I trust.

When you and I first met

And looked to each other’s eyes

Our swift desire,

I gave with reckless hands

My life into your keeping.

Upon your eyes, your words, your body’s grace

I hung, poor fool, a-tremble;

For you had power

To blot the brightening day,

To irradiate the night,

With your sweet hands

To lift me to the mountains where the spirits danced

Or drag me through a hell of furious pain.

And you would like to have that power again

In your two hands?

Oh no, my little one,

No, my pretty one,

Henceforward

For all your sighing

You shall but have my sudden, strong caresses,

My tenderness, my love,

But know

That out, out, out I go

Into the sun

Alone.

So, Man of mine!

I may henceforward ask

Only your strong caresses?

I am your little one,

I am your pretty one,

Even your Beloved, now that you are free

Of little fret and torment.

I may give you pleasuring,

But no more pain.

Is that your meaning?

I would be clear at last.

Oh Man of mine,

We are standing face to face,

Now let there shine

The search-light of our speech

Across the night of silence.

Before us two

There lie dim years for traversing,

Behind, a mist

Through which we long time groped

With futile hands,

And now, today, we meet.

Dear, do I not know

That there were gleams across the darkness—

Swift lightenings

Towards which we onward pressed

As, for an instant,

Seeing our far quest

Within our grasp?

Perhaps these were your beckoning hands,

Your dancing spirits on the mountain peaks,

But not for long we saw them.

And now today it seems

That I must find

What shall be done

When you go out alone

Into the sun.

I have so often watched your silent face,

Your quiet mouth,

Your smooth, white brow,

And longed for speech!

I have so often wished to tell

Of pent-up treasures in my breast

You could not find!

I would have given you such golden wealth

Had you but come!

Had you but said “I want your all.”

But you were dumb.

You went your ways silently

And never asked my gift.

Dear, day by day I lifted to your lips

A chalice brimming with rich wine,

And you but sipped a little and turned away,

And the wine was spilled.

The years have passed:

There may not be upgathering

Of wasted days,

As seasons flushed and waned

We have sown and reaped and harvested.

Now, what shall come?

I cannot go forth

As you, into the Sun

Alone,

I cannot take

My loneliness by the hand

For chosen friend, as you.

I am a woman and I want

Not tenderness,

Not strong caresses only,

But the soul of you,

My Man.

Dear, give me your hands,

Look into my eyes and tell me

If you can find the soul of me.

I think it has gone questing.

Call it back!

Recapture the wingèd thing,

And I will give it gladly

Into your keeping.

But, dear heart, be fearful—

Souls are delicate.

What if mine died long since,

What time it gave up seeking

To find your own?

Your eyes are wet, forgive!

Let there be no more hurting,

Joy there has been in our meeting.

I would banish weeping.

Let the still waters wash away pain

Into the sea of forgetting.

Still may we look into each other’s eyes,

Still answer to the senses’ quick demand,

But as the years have marked us in their passing

So must we go onward—

Hand in hand still,

Yet alone.

FLOODGATES

The Man

The Woman

The Man