MUTILATION
A THICK mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat.
I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up.
Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.
I hold the night in horror;
I dare not turn round.
To-night I have left her alone.
They would have it I have left her for ever.
Oh my God, how it aches
Where she is cut off from me!
Perhaps she will go back to England.
Perhaps she will go back,
Perhaps we are parted for ever.
If I go on walking through the whole breadth of
Germany
I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.
Over there is Russia—Austria, Switzerland, France,
in a circle!
I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.
It aches in me.
What is England or France, far off,
But a name she might take?
I don't mind this continent stretching, the sea far
away;
It aches in me for her
Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching;
Not even longing,
It is only agony.
A cripple!
Oh God, to be mutilated!
To be a cripple!
And if I never see her again?
I think, if they told me so
I could convulse the heavens with my horror.
I think I could alter the frame of things in my
agony.
I think I could break the System with my heart.
I think, in my convulsion, the skies would break.
She too suffers.
But who could compel her, if she chose me against
them all?
She has not chosen me finally, she suspends her
choice.
Night folk, Tuatha De Danaan, dark Gods, govern
her sleep,
Magnificent ghosts of the darkness, carry off her
decision in sleep,
Leave her no choice, make her lapse me-ward,
make her,
Oh Gods of the living Darkness, powers of Night.
WOLFRATSHAUSEN
Humiliation
I HAVE been so innerly proud, and so long alone,
Do not leave me, or I shall break.
Do not leave me.
What should I do if you were gone again
So soon?
What should I look for?
Where should I go?
What should I be, I myself,
"I"?
What would it mean, this
I?
Do not leave me.
What should I think of death?
If I died, it would not be you:
It would be simply the same
Lack of you.
The same want, life or death,
Unfulfilment,
The same insanity of space
You not there for me.
Think, I daren't die
For fear of the lack in death.
And I daren't live.
Unless there were a morphine or a drug.
I would bear the pain.
But always, strong, unremitting
It would make me not me.
The thing with my body that would go on
living
Would not be me.
Neither life nor death could help.
Think, I couldn't look towards death
Nor towards the future:
Only not look.
Only myself
Stand still and bind and blind myself.
God, that I have no choice!
That my own fulfilment is up against me
Timelessly!
The burden of self-accomplishment!
The charge of fulfilment!
And God, that she is necessary! Necessary, and I have no choice! Do not leave me.
A YOUNG WIFE THE pain of loving you Is almost more than I can bear. I walk in fear of you. The darkness starts up where You stand, and the night comes through Your eyes when you look at me. Ah never before did I see The shadows that live in the sun! Now every tall glad tree Turns round its back to the sun And looks down on the ground, to see The shadow it used to shun. At the foot of each glowing thing A night lies looking up. Oh, and I want to sing And dance, but I can't lift up My eyes from the shadows: dark They lie spilt round the cup. What is it?—Hark The faint fine seethe in the air! Like the seething sound in a shell! It is death still seething where The wild-flower shakes its bell And the sky lark twinkles blue— The pain of loving you Is almost more than I can bear.
Green
THE dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
ICKING
River Roses
BY the Isar, in the twilight
We were wandering and singing,
By the Isar, in the evening
We climbed the huntsman's ladder and sat
swinging
In the fir-tree overlooking the marshes,
While river met