FLOODGATES
The Man
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.
The Woman
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.
The 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.