You masquerader! How can you shame to act this part Of unswerving indifference to me? It is not you; why disguise yourself Against me, to break my heart, You evader?
You've a warm mouth, A good warm mouth always sooner to soften Even than your sudden eyes. Ah cruel, to keep your mouth Relentless, however often I kiss it in drouth.
You are not he. Who are you, lying in his place on the bed And rigid and indifferent to me? His mouth, though he laughed or sulked Was always warm and red And good to me.
And his eyes could see The white moon hang like a breast revealed By the slipping shawl of stars, Could see the small stars tremble As the heart beneath did wield Systole, diastole.
And he showed it me So, when he made his love to me; And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out, And his eyes were deep like the sea With shadow, and he looked at me, Till I sank in him like the sea, Awfully.
Oh, he was multiform-- Which then was he among the manifold? The gay, the sorrowful, the seer? I have loved a rich race of men in one-- --But not this, this never-warm Metal-cold--!
Ah, masquerader! With your steel face white-enamelled Were you he, after all, and I never Saw you or felt you in kissing? --Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled With fear, evader!
You will not stir, Nor hear me, not a sound. --Then it was you-- And all this time you were Like this when I lived with you. It is not true, I am frightened, I am frightened of you And of everything. O God!--God too Has deceived me in everything, In everything.
There's four men mowing down by the river; I can hear the sound of the scythe strokes, four Sharp breaths swishing:--yea, but I Am sorry for what's i' store.
The first man out o' the four that's mowin' Is mine: I mun claim him once for all: --But I'm sorry for him, on his young feet, knowin' None o' the trouble he's led to stall.
As he sees me bringin' the dinner, he lifts His head as proud as a deer that looks Shoulder-deep out o' th' corn: and wipes His scythe blade bright, unhooks
His scythe stone, an' over the grass to me! --Lad, tha 's gotten a chilt in me, An' a man an' a father tha 'lt ha'e to be, My young slim lad, an' I'm sorry for thee.
A faint, sickening scent of irises Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table A fine proud spike of purple irises Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable To see the class's lifted and bended faces Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.