Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921/Therapy

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THERAPY
There is a wayOf healing love with love,They say.But I say no!What! Shall pain comfort pain,Fever cool fever,Woe minister to woe? ​Shall tear remembering,Wash cool remembering tear?Shall scar play host to scar,Loneliness shelter loneliness,And is forgetting here?
Poor patch-work of the heart,This healing love with love,Binding the wound to wound,The smart to smart!Grafting the dream upon the other dream,As gardener grafts tree to tree,And both from the same wild rootBearing their bitter fruit;The new dream dreaming in the old,The old dream in the new . . . .And neither dreaming true!
Beloved!Is there a heavenAbove the heaven we knew—So well—Is there beneath our dream's awakeningA darker hell?And shall we know them too?One thing I know!Of a vast giving that is a taking,A wrong, a robbery!Perhaps you so wronged me,I so robbed you.
Therapy!I am content to feelThis health of heart that will not heal;I am content to thinkThat I am one with hunger,Given to thirst, ​And that I need not eat nor drink.I am full-nourished so.*****Beyond the wastes of wept-out woeI see you still,Holding toward me those tender handsI could not fill;My palms still curve and close,Deeming they hoardThe shining things you pouredThat I let spill.
Over us lift the years;Hill upon hillOf days that wither into nightAnd nights that ache to day . . .Reiterated emptiness of shade and lightCrowding the emptier way.
Up to this high, sure therapy of time,Beloved, shall we climb?*****I know that I am tired: I would rather stayDown in the shadows of our dear defeat—Too still for invading grief, too deep—A little while;And sleep, as children sleep.A little, little while!Turn from my dreamlessness, and wake, and smileIndifferent to the dark,Holding to me my one-time joy,As children clutch an ancient, battered toyThey will not have renewed;Smile—and lie closer to a lossThat tunes itself to gain—Inexorable lullaby—Lie softer, safer, ​Pillowed on pulseless fortitude,Drowsy . . . .Beneath my pain.
The MeasureLeonora Speyer

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