Love Poems and Others/Reminder
REMINDER
Do you rememberHow night after night swept level and lowOverhead, at home, and had not one star,Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go Forth to her field of November.
And you remember,How towards the north a red blot on the skyBurns like a blotch of anxietyOver the forges, and small flames ply Like ghosts the shadow of the ember.
Those were the daysWhen it was awful autumn to me,When only there glowed on the dark of the skyThe red reflection of her agony, My beloved smelting down in the blaze
Of death—my dearestLove who had borne, and was now leaving me.And I at the foot of her cross did suffer My own gethsemane.
So I came to you,And twice, after great kisses, I sawThe rim of the moon divinely riseAnd strive to detach herself from the raw Blackened edge of the skies.
Strive to escape;With her whiteness revealing my sunken worldTall and loftily shadowed. But the moonNever magnolia-like unfurled Her white, her lamp-like shape.
For you told me no,And bade me not to ask for the dourCommunion, offering—“a better thing.”So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour Feeling your fingers go
Like a rhythmic breezeOver my hair, and tracing my brows,Till I knew you not from a little wind:—I wonder now if God allows Us only one moment his keys.
If only thenYou could have unlocked the moon on the night,And I baptized myself in the lightOf your love; we both have entered then the white Pure passion, and never again.
I wonder if onlyYou had taken me then, how differentLife would have been: should I have spentMyself in waste, and you have bent Your pride, through being lonely?