Let me consider your emergenceFrom the milieu of our youth:We have played all the afternoon, grown hungry.No meal has been prepared, where have you been?Toward sun's decline we see you down the path,And run to meet you, and perhaps you smile,Or take us in your arms. Perhaps againYou look at us, say nothing, are absorbed,Or chide us for our dirty frocks or faces.Of running wild without our mealsYou do not speak.Then in the house, seized with a sudden joy,After removing gloves and hat, you run,As with a winged descending flight, and cry,Half song, half exclamation,Seize one of us,Crush one of us with mad embraces, biteEars of us in a rapture of affection."You shall have supper," then you say.The stove lids rattle, wood's poked in the fire,The kettle steams, pots boil, by seven o'clockWe sit down to a meal of hodge-podge stuff.I understand now how your youth and spiritsFought back the drabness of the village,And wonder not you spent the afternoonsWith such bright company as Eugenia Turner—And I forgive you hunger, loneliness.But when we asked you where you'd been,Complained of loneliness and hunger, spoke of childrenWho lived in order, sat down thrice a dayTo cream and porridge, bread and meat.We think to corner you—alas for us!Your anger flashes swords! Reasons pour outLike anvil sparks to justify your way:"Your father's always gone—you selfish children,You'd have me in the house from morn till night."You put us in the wrong—our cause is routed.We turn to bed unsatisfied in mind,You've overwhelmed us, not convinced us.Our sense of wrong defeat breeds resolutionTo whip you out when minds grow strong.Up in the moon-lit room without a light,(The lamps have not been filled,)We crawl in unmade beds.We leave you pouring over paper backs.We peek above your shoulder.It is "The Lady in White" you read.Next morning you are dead for sleep,You've sat up more than half the night.We have been playing hours when you arise,It's nine o'clock when breakfast's served at last,When school days come I'm always late to school.Shy, hungry children scuffle at your door,Eye through the crack, maybe, at nine o'clock,Find father has returned during the night.You are all happiness, his idlest wordProvokes your laughter.He shows us rolls of precious money earned;He's given you a silk dress, money tooFor suits and shoes for us—all is forgiven.You run about the house,As with a winged descending flight and cryHalf song, half exclamation.We're sick so much. But then no human soulCould be more sweet when one of us is sick.We run to colds, have measles, mumps, our throatsAre weak, the doctor says. If rooms were warmer,And clothes were warmer, food more regular,And sleep more regular, it might be different.Then there's the well. You fear the water.He laughs at you, we children drink the water,Though it tastes bitter, shows white particles:It may be shreds of rats drowned in the well.The village has no drainage, blights and mildewsGet in our throats. I spend a certain springBent over, yellow, coughing blood at times,Sick to somnambulistic sense of things.You blame him for the well, that's just one thing.You seem to differ about everything—You seem to hate each other—when you quarrelWe cry, take sides, sometimes are whippedFor taking sides.Our broken school days lose us clues,Some lesson has been missed, the final meaningAnd wholeness of the grammar are disturbed—That shall not be made up in all our life.The children, save a few, are not our friends,Some taunt us with your quarrels.We learn great secrets scrawled in signs or wordsOf foulness on the fences. So it isAn American village, in a great Republic,Where men are free, where therefore goodness, wisdomMust have their way!We reach the budding age.Sweet aches are in our breasts:Is it spring, or God, or music, is it you?I am all tenderness for you at times,Then hate myself for feeling so, my fleshCrawls by an instinct from you. You repel meSometimes with an insidious smile, a look.What are these phantasies I have? They breedStrange hatred for you, even while I feelMy soul's home is with you, must be with youTo find my soul's rest. ...I must go back a little. At ten yearsI play with Paula.I plait her crowns of flowers, carry her books,Defend her, watch her, choose her in the games.You overhear us under the oak treeCalling her doll our child. You catch my coatAnd draw me in the house.When I resist you whip me cruelly.To think of whipping me at such time,And mix the shame of smarting legs and backWith love of Paula!So I lose Paula.I am a man at last.I now can master what you are and seeWhat you have been. You cannot rout me now,Or put me in the wrong. Out of old wounds,Remembrance of your baffling days,I take great strength and show youWhere you have been untruthful, where a hater,Where narrow, bitter, growing in on self,Where you neglected us,Where you heaped fast destruction on our father—For now I know that you devoured his soul,And that no soul that you could not devourCould have its peace with you.You've dwindled to a quiet word like this:"You are unfilial." Which means at lastThat I have conquered you, at least it meansThat you could not devour me.Yet am I blind to you? Let me confessYou are the world's whole cycle in yourself:You can be summer rich and luminous;You can be autumn, mellow, mystical;You can be winter with a cheerful hearth;You can be March, bitter, bright and hard,Pouring sharp sleet, and showering cutting hail;You can be April of the flying cloud,And intermittent sun and musical air.I am not you while being you,While finding in myself so much of you.It tears my other self, which is not you.My tragedy is this: I do not love you.Your tragedy is this: my other selfWhich triumphs over you, you hate at heart.Your solace is you have no faith in me.All quiet now, no March days with you now,Only the soft coals slumbering in your face,I saw you totter over a ravine!Your eyes averted, watching steps,A light of resignation on your brow.Your thin-spun hair all gray, blown by the windWhich swayed the blossomed cherry trees,Bent last year's reeds,Shook early dandelions, and tossed a birdThat left a branch with song—I saw you totter over a ravine!What were you at the start?What soul dissatisfaction, sense of wrong,Of being thwarted, stung you?What was your shrinking of the flesh;What fear of being soiled, misunderstood,What wrath for loneliness which constant hopeSaw turned to fine companionship;What in your marriage, what in seeing me,The fruit of marriage, recreated traitsOf face or spirit which you loathed;What in your father and your mother,And in the chromosomes from which you grew,By what mitosis could result at lastIn you, in issues of such moment,In our dissevered beings,In what the world will take from meIn children, in events?All quiet now, no March days with you now,Only the soft coals slumbering in your face,I saw you totter over a ravine,And back of you the Furies!
When the air of October is sweet and cold as the wine of applesHanging ungathered in frosted orchards along the Grand River,I take the road that winds by the resting fields and wanderFrom Eastmanville to Nunica down to the Villa Crossing.I look for old men to talk with, men as old as the orchards,Men to tell me of ancient days, of those who built and planted,Lichen gray, branch broken, bent and sighing,Hobbling for warmth in the sun and for places to sit and smoke.For there is a legend here, a tale of the croaking old onesThat Johnny Appleseed came here, planted some orchards around here,When nothing was here but the pine trees, oaks and the beeches,And nothing was here but the marshes, lake and the river.Peter Van Zylen is ninety and this he tells me:My father talked with Johnny Appleseed there on the hill-side,There by the road on the way to Fruitport, saw himClearing pines and oaks for a place for an apple orchard.Peter Van Zylen says: He got that name from the peopleFor carrying apple-seed with him and planting orchardsAll the way from Ohio, through Indiana across here,Planting orchards, they say, as far as Illinois.Johnny Appleseed said, so my father told me:I go to a place forgotten, the orchards will thrive and be hereFor children to come, who will gather and eat hereafter.And few will know who planted, and none will understand.I laugh, said Johnny Appleseed: Some fellow buys this timberFive years, perhaps from to-day, begins to clear for barley.And here in the midst of the timber is hidden an apple orchard.How did it come here? Lord! Who was it here before me?Yes, I was here before him, to make these places of worship,Labor and laughter and gain in the late October.Why did I do it, eh? Some folks say I am crazy.Where do my labors end? Far west, God only knows!Said Johnny Appleseed there on the hill-side: Listen!Beware the deceit of nurseries, sellers of seeds of the apple.Think! You labor for years in trees not worth the raising.You planted what you knew not, bitter or sour for sweet.No luck more bitter than poor seed, but one as bitter:The planting of perfect seed in soil that feeds and fails,Nourishes for a little, and then goes spent forever.Look to your seed, he said, and remember the soil.And after that is the fight: the foe curled up at the root,The scale that crumples and deadens, the moth in the blossomsBecoming a life that coils at the core of a thing of beauty:You bite your apple, a worm is crushed on your tongue!And it's every bit the truth, said Peter Van Zylen.So many things love an apple as well as ourselves.A man must fight for the thing he loves, to possess it:Apples, freedom, heaven, said Peter Van Zylen.
My brother, the god, and I grow sickOf heaven's heights.We plunge to the valley to hear the tickOf days and nights.We walk and loiter around the LoomTo see, if we may,The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloonTo the shuttle's play;Who grows the wool, who cards and spins,Who clips and ties;For the storied weave of the Gobelins,Who draughts and dyes.But whether you stand or walk aroundYou shall but hearA murmuring life, as it were the soundOf bees or a sphere.No Hand is seen, but still you may feelA pulse in the thread,And thought in every lever and wheelWhere the shuttle sped,Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged—Is it cochineal?—Shot from the shuttle, woven and mergedA tale to reveal.Woven and wound in a bolt and driedAs it were a plan.Closer I looked at the thread and criedThe thread is man!Then my brother curious, strong and bold,Tugged hard at the boltOf the woven life; for a length unrolledThe cryptic cloth.He gasped for labor, blind for the moultOf the up-winged moth.While I saw a growth and a mad crusadeThat the Loom had made;Land and water and living things,Till I grew afraidFor mouths and claws and devil wings,And fangs and stings,And tiger faces with eyes of hellIn caves and holes.And eyes in terror and terribleFor awakened souls.I stood above my brother, the godUnwinding the roll.And a tale came forth of the woven slainSequent and whole,Of flint and bronze, trowel and hod,The wheel and the plane,The carven stone and the graven clodPainted and baked.And cromlechs, proving the human heartHas always ached;Till it puffed with blood and gave to artThe dream of the dome;Till it broke and the blood shot up like fireIn tower and spire.And here was the Persian, Jew and GothIn the weave of the cloth;Greek and Roman, Ghibelline, Guelph,Angel and elf.They were dyed in blood, tangled in dreamsLike a comet's streams.And here were surfaces red and roughIn the finished stuff,Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelledAs the shuttle provedThe fated warp and woof that heldWhen the shuttle moved;And pressed the dye which ran to lossIn a deep maroonAround an altar, oracle, crossOr a crescent moon.Around a face, a thought, a starIn a riot of war!Then I said to my brother, the god, let be,Though the thread be crushed,And the living things in the tapestryBe woven and hushed;The Loom has a tale, you can see, to tell,And a tale has told.I love this Gobelin epicalOf scarlet and gold.If the heart of a god may look in prideAt the wondrous weaveIt is something better to Hands which guide—I see and believe.
Look here, Jack:You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh.You haven't told me any stories. YouJust lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?JACKWhat time is it? Where is my watch?FLORENCEYour watchUnder your pillow! You don't think I'd take it.Why, Jack, what talk for you.JACKWell, never mind,Let's pack no ice.FLORENCEWhat's that?JACKNo quarreling—What is the time?FLORENCELook over towards my dresser—My clock says half-past eleven.JACKListen to that—That hurdy-gurdy's playing Holy Night,And on this street.FLORENCEAnd why not on this street?JACKYou may be right. It may as well be playedWhere you live as in front of where I work,Some twenty stories up. I think you're right.FLORENCESay, Jack, what is the matter? Come! be gay.Tell me some stories. Buy another bottle.Just think you make a lot of money, Jack.You're young and prominent. They all know you.I hear your name all over town. I seeYour picture in the papers. What's the matter?JACKI've lost my job for one thing.FLORENCEYou don't mean it!JACKThey used me and then fired me, same as you.If you don't make the money, out you go.FLORENCEYes, out I go. But, there are other places.JACKOn further down the street.FLORENCENot yet a while.JACKNot yet for me, but still the question isWhether to fight it out for up or down,Or run from everything, be free.FLORENCEYou can't do that.JACKWhy not?FLORENCENo more than I.Oh well perhaps, if a nice man came byTo marry me then I could get away.It happens all the time. Last week in factChrist Perko married Rachel who lived here.He's rich as cream.JACKWhat corresponds to marriageTo take me from slavery?FLORENCEMoney is everything.JACKYes, everything and nothing.Christ Perko's rich, Christ Perko runs this house,The madam merely acts as figure-head;Keeps check upon the girls and on the wine.She's just the editor, and yet I'd ratherBe editor than owner. I was editor.My Perko was the owner of a pulp mill,Incorporate through some multi-millionaires,And all our lesser writers were the girls,Like you and Rachel.FLORENCEBut you know beforeHe married Rachel, he was lover toThe madam here.JACKThe stories tally, forThe pulp mill took my first assistant editorTo wife by making him the editor.And I was fired just as the madam hereLost out with Perko.FLORENCEThis is growing funny...Ahem! I'll ask you something—As if I were a youth and you a girl—How were you ruined first?JACKThe same as you:You ran away from school. It was romance.You thought you loved this flashy travelling man.And I—I loved adventure, loved the truth.I wanted to destroy the force called "They."There is no "They"—we're all together here,And everyone must live, Christ Perko too,The pulp-mill, the policeman, magistrate,The alderman, the precinct captain too,And you the girls, myself the editor,And all the lesser writers. Here we areThrown in one integrated lot. You seeThere is no "They," except the terms, the thoughtWhich ramifies and vivifies the whole. ...So I came to the city, went to workReporting for a paper. Having saidThere is no "They"—I've freed myself to sayWhat bitter things I choose. For how they drive you,And terrify you, mock you, ridicule you,And call you cub and greenhorn, send you roundTo courts and dirty places, make you riskYour body and your life, and make you watchThe rules about your writing; what's tabooed,What names are to be cursed or to be praised,What interests, policies to be subserved,And what to undermine. So I went through,Until I had a desk, wrote editorials—Now said I to myself, I'm free at last.But no, my manager, your madam, mark you,Kept eye on me, for he was under watchOf some Christ Perko. So my managerBlue penciled me when I touched certain subjects.But, as he was a just man, loved me too.He gave me things to write where he could letMy conscience have full scope, as you might liveIn this house where you saw the man you loved,And no one else, though living in this hell.For I lived in a hell, who saw around meSuch lying, hatred, malice, prostitution.And when this offer came to be an editorOf a great magazine, I seemed to feelMy courage and my virtue given reward.Now, I should pass on poems, and on stories,Creations of free souls. It was not so.The poems and the stories one could seeWere written to be sold, to please a taste,Placate a prejudice, keep still aliveAn era dying, ready for the tomb,Already smelling. And that was not all.Just as the madam here must make reportTo Perko, so the magazine had to runTo suit the pulp mill. As the madam here,Assistant to Christ Perko, must keep friendsWith alderman, policemen, magistrates,So I was just a wheel in a machineTo keep it running with such larger wheels,And by them run, of policies, and politicsOf State and Nation. Here was I locked inAnd given dope to keep me still lest ICry out and wake the copper-who's the copperFor such as I was? If he heard me cryHow could he raid the magazine? If he raidedWhere was the court to take me and the rest—That's it, where is the court?FLORENCEIt seems to meYou're bad as I am.JACKI am worse than you:I poison minds with thoughts they take as good.I drug an era, make it foul or dull—You only sicken bodies here and there.But you know how it is. You have remorse,You fight it down, hush it with sophistry.You think about the world, about your fellows:You see that everyone is selling self,Little or much somehow. You feed your body,Try to be hearty, take things as they come.You take athletics, try to keep your strength,As you hear music, laugh, drink wine, and smoke,Are bathed and coifed to keep your beauty fresh.And through it all the soul's and body's needs,The pleasures, interests, passions of our life,The cry that comes from somewhere: "Live, O Soul,The time is passing," move and claim your strength.Till you forget yourself, forget the boyAnd man you were, forget the dreams you had,The creed you wished to live by—yes, what's worse,See dreams you had, grown tawdry, see your creedCracked through and crumbled like a falling house.And then you say: What is the difference?As you might ask what virtue is and whyShould woman keep it.I have reached this placeSave for one truth I hold to, shall still hold to:As long as I have breath: The man who sees not,Or cares not for the Truth that keeps the worldFrom vast disintegration is a brute,And marked for a brute's death—that is his hell.'Twas loyalty to this truth that made me loseMy place as editor. For when they cameAnd tried to make me pass an articleTo poison millions with, I said, "I won't,I won't by God. I'll quit before I do."And then they said, "You quit," and so I quit.FLORENCEAnd so you took to drink and came to me!And that's the same as if I came to youAnd used you as an editor. I am nothingBut just a poor reporter in this house—But now I quit.JACKWhere are you going, Florence?FLORENCEI'm going to a village or a farmWhere I'll get up at six instead of twelve,Where I'll wear calico instead of silk,And where there'll be no furnace in the house.And where the carpet which has kept me hereAnd keeps you here as editor is not.I'm going to economize my lifeBy freeing it of systems which grow richBy using me, and for the privilegeBestow these gaudy clothes and perfumed bed.I hate you now, because I hate my life.JACKWait! Wait a minute.FLORENCEDinah, call a cab!
I met Hosea Job on Randolph StreetWho said to me: "I'm going for the train,I want you with me."And it happened thenMy mind was hard, as muscles of the backGrow hard resisting cold or shock or strainAnd need the osteopath to be made supple,To give the nerves and streams of life a chance.Hosea Job was just the osteopathTo loose, relax my mood. And so I said"All right"—and went.Hosea was a manWhom nothing touched of danger, or of harm.His life was just a rare-bit dream, where some oneSeems like to fall before a truck or train—Instead he walks across them. Or you seeShadows of falling things, great buildings topple,Pianos skid like bulls from hellish cornersAnd chase the oblivious fool who stands and smiles.The buildings slant and sway like monstrous searchlights,But never touch him. And the mad pianoComes up to him, puts down its angry head,Runs out a friendly tongue and licks his hand,And lows a symphony.By which I meanHosea had some money, and would signA bond or note for any man who asked him.He'd rent a house and leave it, rent another,Then rent a farm, move out from town and in.He'd have the leases of superfluous placesCancelled some how, was never sued for rent.One time he had a fancy he would seeSouth Africa, took ship with a load of mules,First telegraphing home from New OrleansHe'd be back in the Spring. Likewise he wentTo Klondike with the rush. I think he ownedMore kinds of mining stock than there were mines.He had more quaint, peculiar men for friendsThan one could think were living. He believedIn every doctrine in its time, that promisedSalvation for the world. He took no thoughtFor life or for to-morrow, or for health,Slept with his windows closed, ate what he wished.And if he cut his finger, let it go.I offered him peroxide once, he laughed.And when I asked him if his soul was savedHe only said: "I see things. I lie backAnd take it easy. Nothing can go wrongIn any serious sense."So many thoughtHosea was a nut, and others thought,That I was just a nut for liking him.And what would any man of business sayIf he knew that I didn't ask a question,But simply went with him to take the trainThat day he asked me.And the train had goneFive miles or so when I said: "Where you going?"Hosea answered, and it made me start—Hosea answered simply, "We are goingTo see Sir Galahad."It made me startTo hear Hosea say this, for I thoughtHe was now really off. But, I looked at himAnd saw his eyes were sane."Sir Galahad?Who is Sir Galahad?"Hosea answered:"I'm going up to see Sir Galahad,And sound him out about re-enteringThe game and run for governor again."So then I knew he was the man our fathersWorked with and knew and called Sir Galahad,Now in retirement fifteen years or so.Well, I was twenty-five when he was famous.Sir Galahad was forty then, and nowMust be some fifty-five while I am forty.So flashed across my thought the matter of timeAnd ages. So I thought of all he did:Of how he went from faith to faith in politicsAnd ran for every office up to governor,And ran for governor four times or so,And never was elected to an office.He drew more bills to remedy injustice,Improve the courts, relieve the poor, reformAdministration, than the legislatureCould read, much less digest or understand.The people beat him and the leaders flogged him.They shut the door against his face untilHe had no place to go except a farmAmong the stony hills, and there he went.And thither we were going to see the knight,And call him from his solitude to the fightAgainst injustice, greed.So we got offThe train at Alden, just a little villageOf fifty houses lying beneath the sprawlOf hills and hills. And here there was a stillnessMade lonelier by an anvil ringing, byA plow-man's voice at intervals.Here HoseaEngaged a horse and buggy, and we droveAnd wound about a crooked road betweenGreat hills that stood together like the backsOf elephants in a herd, where boulders layAs thick as hail in places. Ruined pinesStood like burnt matches. There was one which stuckAgainst a single cloud so white it seemedA bursted bale of cotton.We reached the summitAnd drove along past orchards, past a fieldLevel and green, kept like a garden, richAgainst the coming harvest. Here we metA scarecrow man, driving a scarecrow horseHitched to a wobbly wagon. And we stopped,The scarecrow stopped. The scarecrow and HoseaTalked much of people and of farming—ISat listening, and I gathered from the talk,And what Hosea told me as we drove,That once this field so level and so greenThe scarecrow owned. He had cleaned out the stumps,And tried to farm it, failed, and lost the field,But raged to lose it, thought he might succeedIn further time. Now having lost the fieldSo many years ago, could be a scarecrow,And drive a scarecrow horse, yet laugh againAnd have no care, the sorrow healed.It seemedThe clearing of the stumps was scarce a starterToward a field of profit. For in truth,The soil possessed a secret which the scarecrowNever went deep enough to learn about.His problem was all stumps. Not solving that,He sold it to a farmer who out-slavedThe busiest bee, but only half succeeded.He tried to raise potatoes, made a failure.He planted it in beans, had half a crop.He sowed wheat once and reaped a stack of straw.The secret of the soil eluded him.And here Hosea laughed: "This fellow's failureWas just the thing that gave another manThe secret of the soil. For he had studiedThe properties of soils and fertilizers.And when he heard the field had failed to raisePotatoes, beans and wheat, he simply said:There are other things to raise: the question isWhether the soil is suited to the thingsHe tried to raise, or whether it needs buildingTo raise the things he tried to raise, or whetherIt must be builded up for anything.At least he said the field is clear of stumps.Pass on your field, he said. If I lose outI'll pass it on. The field is his, he saidWho can make something grow.And so this fieldOf waving wheat along which we were drivingWas just the very field the scarecrow manHad failed to master, as that other manHad failed to master after him.HoseaKept talking of this field as we drove on.That field, he said, is economicalOf men compared with many fields. You seeIt only used two men. To grub the stumpsTook all the scarecrow's strength. That other manRan off to Oklahoma from this field.I have known fields that ate a dozen menIn country such as this. The field remainsAnd laughs and waits for some one who divinesThe secret of the field. Some farmers liveTo prove what can't be done, and narrow downThe guess of what is possible. It's rightA certain crop should prosper and anotherShould fail, and when a farmer tries to raiseA crop before it's time, he wastes himselfAnd wastes the field to try.We now were climbingTo higher hills and rockier fields. HoseaHad fallen into silence. I was thinkingAbout Sir Galahad, was wonderingWhich man he was, the scarecrow, or the farmerWho didn't know the seed to sow, or whetherHe might still prove the farmer raising wheat,Now we were come to give him back the fieldWith all the stumps grubbed out, the secret lyingRevealed and ready for the appointed hands.We passed an orchard growing on a knollAnd saw a barn perked on a rocky hill,And near the barn a house. Hosea said:"This is Sir Galahad's." We tied the horse.And we were in the silence of the countryAt mid-day on a day in June. No birdWas singing, fowl was cackling, cow was lowing,No dog was barking. All was summer stillness.We crossed a back-yard past a windlass well,Dodged under clothes lines through a place of chips,Walked in a path along the house. I said:"Sir Galahad is ploughing, or perhapsIs mending fences, cutting weeds." It seemedToo bad to come so far and not to find him."We'll find him," said Hosea. "Let us sitUnder that tree and wait for him."And thenWe turned the corner of the house and thereUnder a tree an old man sat, his headBowed down upon his breast, locked fast in sleep.And by his feet a dog half blind and fatLay dozing, too inert to rise and bark.Hosea gripped my arm. "Be still" he said."Let's ask him where Sir Galahad is," said I.And then Hosea whispered, "God forgive me,I had forgotten, you too have forgotten.The man is old, he's very old. The yearsGo by unnoticed. Come! Sir GalahadShould sleep and not be waked."We tip-toed offAnd hurried back to Alden for the train.
You wonder at my bright round eyes, my lipsPressed tightly like a venomous rosette.Thus do me honor by so much, fond wretch,And praise my Persian beauty, dulcet voice.But oh you know me, read me, passion blindsYour vision not at all, and you have passionFor me and what I am. How can you be so?Hold me so bear-like, take my lips with yours,Bury your face in these my russet tresses,And yet not lose your vision? So I love you,And fear you too. How idle to deny itTo you who know I fear you.Here am IWho answer you what e'er you choose to ask.You stride about my rooms and open books,And say when did he give you this? You pickHis photograph from mantels, dressers, drawlOut of ironic strength, and smile the while:"You did not love this man." You probe my soulAbout his courtship, how I ran away,How he pursued with gifts from city to city,Threw bouquets to me from the pit, or stoodLike Cleopatra's Giant negro guard,Watchful and waiting at the green-room door.So, devil, that you are, with needle pricks,One little question at a time, you've inkedThe story in my flesh. And now at lastYou smile and say I killed him. Well, it's true.But what a death he had! Envy him that.Your frigid soul can never win the deathI gave him.Listen since you know alreadyAll but the subtlest matters. How you laugh!You know these too? Well, only I can tell them.First 'twas a piteous thing to see a manSo love a woman, see a living thingSo love another. Why he could not touchMy hand but that his heart went up ten beats.His eyes would grow as bright as flames, his breathCome short when speaking. When he felt my breastCrush soft around him he would reel and walkAway from me, while I stood like a snakePoised for the strike, as quiet and possessedAs a dead breeze. And you can have me wholly,And pet and pat me like a favored child,And let me go my way, while you turn backTo what you left for me.Not so with him:I was all through his blood, had made his fleshMy flesh, his nerves, brain, soul all mine at last,Dreams, thoughts, emotions, hungers all my own.So that he lived two lives, his own and mine,With one poor body, which he gave to me.Save that he could not give what I pushed backInto his hands to use for me and liveMy pities, hatreds, loves and passions with.I loved all this and thrived upon it, stillI did not love him. Then why marry him?Why don't you see? It meant so much to him.And 'twas a little thing for me to do.His loneliness, his hunger, his great passionThat showed in his poor eyes, his broken breath,His chivalry, his gifts, his poignant letters,His failing health, why even woman's crueltyCannot deny such passion. Woman's crueltyTakes other means for finding its expression.And mine found its expression—you have guessedAnd so I tell you all.We were married then.He made a sacrament of our nuptials,Knelt with closed eyes beside the bed, my lipsPressed to his brow and throat. Unveiled my breastAnd looked, then closed his eyes. He did not take meAs man takes his possession, nature's way,In triumph of life, in lightning, no, he cameA suppliant, a worshipper, and whispered:"What angel child may lie upon the breastOf this it's angel mother."Well, you seeThe tears came in my eyes, for pity of him,Who made so much of what I had to give,And could give easily whether 'twas my raptureTo give or to withhold. And in that momentContempt of which I had been scarcely consciousLying diffused like dew around my heartDrained down itself into my heart's dark cupTo one bright drop of vital power, whereHe could not see it, scarcely knew that somethingGradually drugged the potion that he drankIn life with me.So we were wed a year,And he was with me hourly, till at lastI could not breathe for him, while he could breatheNo where but where I was. Then the bazaarWas coming on where I was to dance, and heHad long postponed a trip to England whereGreat interests waited for him, and with kissesI pushed him to his duty, and he wentShame stricken for a duty long postponed,Unable to retort against my wordsWhen I said "You must go;" for well he knewHe should have gone before. And as for goingI pleaded the bazaar and hate of travel,And got him off, and freed myself to breathe.His life had been too fast, his years too manyTo stand the strain that came. There was the worryAbout the business, and the labor over it.There was the war, and all the fear and turmoilIn London for the war. But most of allThere was the separation. And his letters!You've read them, wretch. Such letters never wereOf aching loneliness and pining loveAnd hope that lives across three thousand miles,And waits the day to travel them, and fearOf something which may bar the way forever:A storm, a wreck, a submarine and no dayWithout a letter or a cablegram.And look at the endearments—oh you fiendTo pick their words to pieces like a botanistWho cuts a flower up for his microscope.And oh myself who let you see these letters.Why did I do it? Rather why is itYou master me, even as I mastered him?At last he finished, got his passage back.He had been gone three months. And all these lettersShowed how he starved for me, and scarce could waitTo take me in his arms again, would chokeWith fast and heavy feeding.Well, you seeThe contempt I spoke of which lay long diffusedLike dew around my heart, and which at onceDrained down itself into my heart's dark cupGrew brighter, bitterer, for this obvious hunger,This thirst which could not wait, the piteous trembling.And all the while it seemed he thought his loveGrew sacreder as it grew uncontrolled,And marked by trembling, choking, tears and sighs.This is not love which should be, has no useIn this or any world. And as for meI could not stand it longer. And I thoughtOf what was best to do: if 'twas not bestTo kill him as the queen bee kills the mateIn rapture's own excess.Then he arrived.I went to meet him in the car, pretendedThe feed pipe broke while I was on the way.I was not at the station when he came.I got back to the house and found him gone.He had run through the rooms calling my name,So Mary told me. Then he went aroundFrom place to place, wherever in the villageHe thought to find me.Soon I heard his steps,The key in the door, his winded breath, his call,His running, stumbling up the stairs, while IStood silent as a shadow in our room,My round bright eyes grown brighter for the lightHis life was feeding them. And then he stoodBreathless and trembling in the door-way, stoodTransfixed with ecstacy, then rushed and caught meAnd broke into loud tears.It had to end.One or the other of us had to die.I could not die but by a violence,And he could die by love alone, and loveI gave him to his death.Why tell you detailsAnd ways with which I maddened him, and whippedThe energies of love? You have extractedThe secret in the main, that 'twas from loveHe came to death. His life had been too fast,His years too many for the daily raptureI gave him after three months' separation.And so he died one morning, made me freeOf nothing but his presence in the flesh.His love is on me yet, and its effect.And now you're here to slave me differently—No soul is ever free.