Classic Poem

Do you remember
How night after night swept level and low
Overhead, at home, and had not one star
Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go
Forth to her fields, that November?

And you remember
How towards the north a red blotch on the sky
Burns like a blot of anxiety
Over the forges, and small flames ply
Like ghosts on the glowing of the ember?

Those were the days
When it was awful autumn to me;
When only there glowed on the dark of the sky
The red reflection of her agony,
My beloved, smelting down in the blaze

Of death; my dearest
Love who had borne, and now was leaving me.
And I at the foot of her cross did suffer
My own gethsemane.

So I came to you;
And twice, after wild kisses, I saw
The rim of the moon divinely rise
And strive to detach herself from the raw
Blackened edge of the skies.

Strive to escape;
With her whiteness revealing my sunken world
Tall and loftily shadowed. But the moon
Never magnolia-like unfurled
Her white, her lamp-like shape.

For you told me no.
Begged me to ask not for the dour
Communion, offering “a better thing.”
So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour
Feeling your fingers go

Like a rhythmic breeze
Over my hair, and tracing my brows,
Till I knew you not from a little wind
—I wonder if God allows
Us only one moment his keys!

If only then
You could have unlocked the moon on the night?
And I baptized myself in the well
Of your love? we both have entered then the right
Rare passion, and never again?

I wonder if only
You had taken me then, how different
Life would have been? should I have spent
Myself in anger, and you have bent
Your head, through being lonely?