Anxiety


The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,
The crisping steam of a train


Melts in the air, while two black birds
Sweep past the window again.


Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait


In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy
To leap down at our gate.


He has passed us by; but is it
Relief that starts in my breast?


Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still
She has no rest.

A Passing Bell

Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving;
What did you say, my dear?
The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child
Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob—
Yes, my love, I hear.


One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving,
Why not let it ring?
The roses lean down when they hear it, the tender, mild
Flowers of the bleeding-heart fall to the throb—
It is such a little thing!


A wet bird walks on the lawn, call to the boy to come and look,
Yes, it is over now.
Call to him out of the silence, call him to see
The starling shaking its head as it walks in the grass—
Ah, who knows how?


He cannot see it, I can never show it him, how it shook—
Don’t disturb him, darling.
—Its head as it walked: I can never call him to me,
Never, he is not, whatever shall come to pass.
No, look at the wet starling.

A Spiritual Woman

Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;

They have taught you to see
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,
A cunning algebra in the faces of men,

And God like geometry
Completing his circles, and working cleverly.


I’ll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;

If I can—if any one could.
Then perhaps in the dark you’ll have got what you want to find.
You’ve discovered so many bits, with your clever eyes,

And I’m a kaleidoscope
That you shake and shake, and yet it won’t come to your mind.
Now stop carping at me.—But God, how I hate you!

Do you fear I shall swindle you?
Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will abate you
Somehow?—so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so cautious, you
Must have me all in your will and your consciousness—

I hate you.

A Baby Asleep after Pain

As a drenched, drowned bee
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,
So clings to me
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears

And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.

My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,
Like a burden she hangs on me.

She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,

Reaching downwards;
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee
Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

A Baby Running Barefoot

When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass
Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.


I long for the baby to wander hither to me
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,
Cool like syringa buds,
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.