She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (5 page)

KATHERINE GARRISON CHAPIN

When I met my lover

Lilacs were new,

He said, “I brought some lilacs,

Lilacs for you.”

I took them eagerly

Laughing in surprise;

He said: “They are pretty

Just like your eyes.”

I pressed the pointed blossoms

Close to my cheek,

And the smooth green leaves . . .

But I couldn't speak.

How was I to tell him,

Spring being new,

How say: “It is the lilacs

I love, not you.”

DOROTHY PARKER

By the time you swear you're his,

Shivering and sighing,

And he vows his passion is

Infinite, undying—

Lady, make a note of this:

One of you is lying.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

And what are you that, wanting you,

I should be kept awake

As many nights as there are days

With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,

As many days as crawl

I should be listening to the wind

And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man

And twenty men as kind,

And what are you, that you should be

The one man on my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,

As any sage will tell—

And what am I, that I should love

So wisely and so well?

ROGER McGOUGH

away from you

i feel a great emptiness

a gnawing loneliness

with you

i get that reassuring feeling

of wanting to escape

FOLK SONG

I once loved a young man as dear as my life,

And ofttimes I told him I'd make him his wife.

I've fulfilled my promise, I made him his wife

And see what I've come to by being his wife.

I'm going to Georgia,

I'm going to roam,

And if ever I get there,

I'll make it my home.

My cheeks were once red, as red as a rose,

But now they are as pale as the lilies that grow;

My children all hungry and crying for bread;

My husband, a drunkard, Lord, I wish I were dead!

Come, all young ladies, take warning by me:

Never plant your affections on a green, young tree;

For the leaves will wither and the buds they will die;

Some young man might fool you as one has fooled I.

They'll hug you, they'll kiss you, they'll tell you more lies

Than the cross-ties on the railroad or the stars in the skies;

They'll tell you they love you like stars in the West

But along comes corn whiskey; they love it the best.

Go, build me a cabin on the mountain so high

Where the wild birds and turtledove can hear my sad cry.

INGEBORG BACHMANN

Jointly used: seasons, books and music.

The keys, the tea cups, the breadbasket, sheets

and a bed.

A dowry of words, of gestures, brought along,

used, spent.

Social manners observed. Said. Done. And always

the hand extended.

With winter, a Vienna septet and with summer I've

been in love.

With maps, a mountain hut, with a beach and

a bed.

A cult filled with dates, promises made

as if irrevocable,

enthused about Something and pious before Nothing,

(—the folded newspapers, cold ashes, the slip of paper

with a jotted note)

fearless in religion, as the church was this bed.

From the seascape came my inexhaustible painting.

From the balcony, the people, my neighbors,

were there to be greeted.

By the fireplace, in safety, my hair had its most exceptional

color.

The doorbell ringing was the alarm for my joy.

It was not you I lost,

but the world.

QUEEN ELIZABETH I

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

His too familiar care doth make me rue it.

No means I find to rid him from my breast,

Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

Let me or float or sink, be high or low.

Or let me live with some more sweet content,

Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

from
The Knight of Curtesy

“Make it sweet and delicate to eat

For it is for my lady bright.

If she guessed what was in this meat

Her heart would not be light.”

The lord's words were truly spoke

The meat of woe and death

The lady did not know it though

And followed him across the hearth.

And when the lord sat down to eat

His lady at his side

The heart was served upon the plate

But it had grief inside.

“Madame, eat of this,” he said,

“For it is dainty and pleasant.”

The lady ate and was not dismayed

For of spice there was not want.

When the lady had eaten well

To her the lord said there,

“His heart you have eaten every morsel

Of your knight to whom you gave a lock of hair.

“As you can see, your knight is dead;

Madame, I tell you certainly.

That is his heart on which you fed.

Madame, at last we all must die.”

When the lady heard the words he said

She cried, “My heart shall rend

Alas, I ever saw this day

Now, please God may my life end.”

Up she rose with heart of woe

And straight to her chamber went;

She confessed devoutly so

That shortly she received the sacrament.

Mourning in her bed she lay

So pitiful was her moan.

“Alas, my own dear love,” she said,

“Since you are dead, my life is gone.

“Have I taken your heart in my body

That meat to me is dear;

For sorrow alas I now must die

A noble knight without fear

“With me thy heart shall surely die

I have received the sacrament;

All earthly food I shall deny

In woe and pain, my life is spent.”

Her complaint was piteous to hear.

“Goodbye my lord forever;

I die as true a wife to you

As any could be ever

“I am chaste of the knight of curtesy

And wrongfully are we brought to confusion

I am chaste of him and he of me

And of all other save you alone.

“My lord, you were to blame

For making me eat his heart;

But since it is buried in my body

I shall never eat any other meat.

“I have now received eternal food

Earthly meat will I never touch

Now realize what you have done

Have mercy on me—and believe.”

With that the lady in front of all in sight

Yielded up her spirit with a moan;

The high god of heaven almighty

On us have mercy—every one.

EMILY DICKINSON

My life closed twice before its close—

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

When we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow—

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame;

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me—

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well:—

Long, long shall I rue thee,

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?—

With silence and tears.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;

In my own way, and with my full consent.

Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely

Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.

Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping

I will confess; but that's permitted me;

Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping

Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.

If I had loved you less or played you slyly

I might have held you for a summer more,

But at the cost of words I value highly,

And no such summer as the one before.

Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—

I shall have only good to say of you.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

I never said I loved you, John:

Why will you teaze me day by day,

And wax a weariness to think upon

With always “do” and “pray”?

You know I never loved you, John;

No fault of mine made me your toast:

Why will you haunt me with a face as wan

As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take

Pity upon you, if you'd ask:

And pray don't remain single for my sake

Who can't perform that task.

I have no heart?—Perhaps I have not;

But then you're mad to take offence

That I don't give you what I have not got:

Use your own common sense.

Let bygones be bygones:

Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:

I'd rather answer “No” to fifty Johns

Than answer “Yes” to you.

Let's mar our pleasant days no more,

Song-birds of passage, days of youth:

Catch at today, forget the days before:

I'll wink at your untruth.

Let us strike hands as hearty friends;

No more, no less; and friendship's good:

Only don't keep in view ulterior ends,

And points not understood

In open treaty. Rise above

Quibbles and shuffling off and on:

Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,—

No, thank you, John.

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

——And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes

on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed;

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street

To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And nothing-I-have-to-do and I'm-happy-why?

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies—

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

That the war would be over before they got to you;

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other—

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.