Selected Poems (Aiken)/Cliff Meeting

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CLIFF MEETING
Met on the westworn cliff, where the short grassBlew on the sea-rock edge, with crowded sea-pinksAnd heather, she and I stood face to face,Strangers, and stared. What's in a face or eyeThat gives its secret, when the moment comes,For nothing, less than nothing? We but looked,Looked once, looked hard, looked deep; the sea-wind sparedThe blue still waters of her soul; far downI saw the ghost I loved. Did she see also,In my wan eyes, a depth, and a swimming ghost?Tranced so at cliff's-edge, stood and stared; then laughed;Then sat together in chilly sunlight, watchingThe moving brows of foam come round the headland,And rabbits daring the cliff.
         Her hand, in grass—(A sea-pink nodded betwixt thumb and finger)I touched and lifted: she but smiled. Her armI scratched with a tiny fork of heather, drawingA pair of furrows from elbow down to wrist,White and sharp; she smiled at first, then frowned.Her mouth, which said no word and gave no name,I kissed; and as I kissed it, with eyes open,I saw the sea-pink (caught twixt thumb and finger)Plucked up unmercifully.
          The sun went downBetween two waves; and as it went, she rose,Shaking her dress. To-morrow (so she said)Here by the cliff's-edge we might meet again.What's in a face or eye that gives its secret ​So lightly, when the moment comes? She sawWeariness in me, love gone down like the sun,The fleet ghost gone; and as she saw, she drooped.Beauty waned out of her; the light drained outFrom her deep eyes; pathetic seemed she; IDiscomfited, leering upon her, angryThat I had thought I loved her. So, she went:Miserable, small, self-pitying, down to darkness.I watched her go, thinking it strange that she—Meagre, unlovely—should have captured me.
And on the morrow, when she did not come,There by the cliff's edge, staked, I found a letterMystic, insoluble, with few words written,Saying—(and it was strange, and like a dream,For, as I read, the words seemed only marksOf bird-claws in the sand—) that she was goneDown to the village, darkness, gone forever;But left this bird for me, that I might know—What I should know. And in the short grass lay,There with the sea-pinks, a blue cormorant,White eyelids closed, and dying. Her I liftedBetween my hands, and laid against my breast,Striving to warm her heart. The bird was starved;The eyes drooped open, and the livid beakOpened a little; and I gave my handsTo her to eat, having no other food;Thrusting a finger in the beak, that sheMight eat my flesh and live. But she was dying,And could not move the purple beak, fallingAgainst my hand, inert; and then I thoughtThat, seeking to make her eat, I did but hastenHer death. For in a moment, then, she died.
Along the cliff I walked, taking the bird,Holding it in my hands. . . . What had she meantIn leaving this blue cormorant for me?Was she not coming? Everywhere I looked;By rock and tree; in coigns of heather; evenDown where the moving brows of foam came in.Nowhere—nowhere. The sun went west behind ​Two waves. It was the hour of parting. WouldShe come not now for that?
         The darkness gathered.The sea-pinks lost their colour. And I walkedAlong the cliff's-edge, losing all power of thought,Taking the cormorant into the dark with me.

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