Collected Poems

A GIRL WALKING INTO A SHADOW

The eyelids opened, and it stared across The window pane, into the empty sky. Neither the living nor the dead I stood, Longing to leave my poor flesh huddled there Heaped up for burning under the last laments. I moved, to leap on spider webs and climb. But where do spiders fling those filaments, Those pure formalities of blood and air, Both perfect and alive? I did no good. The hands of daylight hammered down my ghost, And I was home now, bowing into my dust, To quicken into stupor one more time, One of the living buried like the dead. A GIRL WALKING INTO A SHADOW The mere trees cast no coolness where you go. Your small feet press no darkness into the grass. I know your weight of days, and mourn I know. All hues beneath the ground are bare grayness. When I was young, I might have touched your hair, Gestured my warning, how that fire will gray, Slight arms and delicate hands fall heavier, And pale feet hasten to a dark delay. Now old, I love you slowly, through my sound. Lightly alive, you cannot mourn for trees. You cannot care how grass, above the gound, Gathers to mold your shadow's quick caress. Heavy for you, I hear the futile speech Of air in trees, of shadows in your hair. Quick to go by me now, beyond my reach, You pause. With darkness deepening everywhere, Something of light falls, pitiful and kind. Something of love forgot the dark embrace SAINT JUDAS 75 Of evening, where the lover's eyes go blind With dreaming on the hollows of your face. BUT ONLY MINE I dreamed that I was dead, as all men do, And feared the dream, though hardly for the sake Of any thrust of pain my flesh might take Below the softening shales. Bereft of you, I lay for days and days alone, I knew Somewhere above me boughs were burning gold, And women's frocks were loose, and men grew old. Grew old. And shrivelled. Asked the time of day. And then forgot. Turned. Looked among the grass. Tripped on a twig. Frightened some leaves away. Children. And girls. I knew, above my face, Rabbit and jay flocked, wondering how to cross An empty field stripped naked to the sun. They halted into a shadow, huddled down. Rabbit and jay,old man, and girl, and child, All moved above me, dreaming of broad light. I heard you walking through the empty field. Startled awake, I found my riving sight: The grave drifted away, and it was night, I felt your soft despondent shoulders near. Out of my dream, the dead rose everywhere. I did not dream your death, but only mine. 76 ...