Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/55

This page has been validated.

COLLECTED POEMS

But look for no red light behind him—No fumes of many-colored sins,Fanned high by screaming violins.God knows what good it was to blind him,Or whether man or woman wins.
And by the same eternal token,Who knows just how it will all end?—This drama of hard words unspoken,This fireside farce, without a friendOr enemy to comprehendWhat augurs when two lives are broken,And fear finds nothing left to mend.
He stares in vain for what awaits him,And sees in Love a coin to toss;He smiles, and her cold hush berates himBeneath his hard half of the cross;They wonder why it ever was;And she, the unforgiving, hates himMore for her lack than for her loss.
He feeds with pride his indecision,And shrinks from what will not occur,Bequeathing with infirm derisionHis ashes to the days that were,Before she made him prisoner;And labors to retrieve the visionThat he must once have had of her.
He waits, and there awaits an ending,And he knows neither what nor when;But no magicians are attendingTo make him see as he saw then,And he will never find again

38

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.