A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND
60 lines✦
h, stern cold man,How can you lie so relentless hardWhile I wash you with weeping water!Ah, face, carved hard and cold,You have been like this, on your guardAgainst me, since death began. You masquerader!How can you shame to act this partOf unswerving indifference to me?It is not you; why disguise yourselfAgainst me, to break my heart,You evader? You've a warm mouth,A good warm mouth always sooner to softenEven than your sudden eyes.Ah cruel, to keep your mouthRelentless, however oftenI kiss it in drouth. You are not he.Who are you, lying in his place on the bedAnd rigid and indifferent to me?His mouth, though he laughed or sulkedWas always warm and redAnd good to me. And his eyes could seeThe white moon hang like a breast revealedBy the slipping shawl of stars,Could see the small stars trembleAs the heart beneath did wieldSystole, diastole. And he showed it meSo, when he made his love to me;And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out,And his eyes were deep like the seaWith shadow, and he looked at me,Till I sank in him like the sea,Awfully. Oh, he was multiform--Which then was he among the manifold?The gay, the sorrowful, the seer?I have loved a rich race of men in one----But not this, this never-warmMetal-cold--! Ah, masquerader!With your steel face white-enamelledWere you he, after all, and I neverSaw you or felt you in kissing?--Yet sometimes my heart was trammelledWith fear, evader! You will not stir,Nor hear me, not a sound.--Then it was you--And all this time you wereLike this when I lived with you.It is not true,I am frightened, I am frightened of youAnd of everything.O God!--God tooHas deceived me in everything,In everything.
✦