mother

I wonder where my papa is,
Oh, where could he have gone,
I wonder why he does not come
And see his Lilly Long.
He would come and sit by me
When the fever burnt my brow,
I wonder where my papa is,
For he comes not near me now.
II
I hear no more the foot pace
In the hall by my door,
Where he would gently, gently tread
Upon the oaken floor.
His place is vacant by the hearth,
There stands his easy chair;
I hear no more his loving voice
Raising the evening prayer.
III

I SAW a new world in my dream,
Where all the folks alike did seem:
There was no Child, there was no Mother,
There was no Change, there was no Other.

For everything was Same, the Same;
There was no praise, there was no blame;
There was neither Need nor Help for it;
There was nothing fitting or unfit.

Nobody laugh’d, nobody wept;
None grew weary, so none slept;
There was nobody born, and nobody wed;
This world was a world of the living-dead.

I SAID, This misery must end:
Shall I, that am a man and know
that sky and wind are yet my friend,
sit huddled under any blow?
so speaking left the dismal room
and stept into the mother-night
all fill’d with sacred quickening gloom
where the few stars burn’d low and bright,
and darkling on my darkling hill
heard thro’ the beaches’ sullen boom
heroic note of living will
rung trumpet-clear against the fight;
so stood and heard, and rais’d my eyes

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born;
The rent was thirty-two a month,
Which made my father mourn.
He said he could remember when
His father paid the rent;
And when a man's expenses did
Not take his every cent.

I remember, I remember--
My mother telling my cousin
That eggs had gone to twenty-six
Or seven cents a dozen;
And how she told my father that
She didn't like to speak
Of things like that, but Bridget now
Demanded four a week.

I have got out of my own control, I have fallen into unconsciousness; in my utter unconsciousness how joyful I am with myself!
The darling sewed up my eyes so that I might not see other than him, so that suddenly I opened my eyes on his face.
My soul fought with me saying, “Do not pain me”; I said, “Take your divorce.” She said, “Grant it”; I granted it.
When my mother saw on my cheek the brand of your love she cut my umbilical cord on that, the moment I was born.

I had a Hippopotamus, I kept him in a shed
And fed him upon vitamins and vegetable bread
I made him my companion on many cheery walks
And had his portrait done by a celebrity in chalk

His charming eccentricities were known on every side
The creatures' popularity was wonderfully wide
He frolocked with the Rector in a dozen friendly tussles
Who could not but remark on his hippopotamuscles

If he should be affected by depression or the dumps
By hippopotameasles or the hippopotamumps

I do not want to be your weeping woman
holding you to me with a chain of grief.

I could more easily bear the flames of your anger
than the frost of your kisses empty of desire:

I do not want to be your gentle lover
dragging you to me on a rope of pity.

Sooner that you never touched me than that you ever
should touch me from a distance made of mercy:

I do not want to be your silent mother
always forgiving and smiling and never loving.

If you forget me, forget me utterly. Never

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature
-- not his Father but his Mother stirs
within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims
kindredship with us, and some globule
from her veins steals up into our own.

I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
I am all sere and yellow,