If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor,
What a bonfire my letters would make.

If I could speak words of water,
You would drown when I said
'I love you.'

If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.

775

If Blame be my side—forfeit Me—
But doom me not to forfeit Thee—
To forfeit Thee? The very name
Is sentence from Belief—and House—

If all were rain and never sun,
No bow could span the hill;
If all were sun and never rain,
There’d be no rainbow still.

983

Ideals are the Fairly Oil
With which we help the Wheel
But when the Vital Axle turns
The Eye rejects the Oil.

I'd love to have you on a rainy day
Tucked in a chair, my head against your knee
To sit and dream with. Sometime you must be
My home-sharer whom rain can't keep away.

I'd like to know
what this whole show
is all about
before it's out.

Ich liebe meine Zeit - sie ist mir Kleid und Hemd,
Das meinen Körper wärmt - und doch ist sie mir fremd,
Ich schließe draus: ich liebe nicht die Zeit,
Sonst müßt´ sie mehr mir sein als bloß das Kleid.

I know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it’s hotter than yesterday and will be hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the Hotel Morrison.

The wave, over the wave, a weird thing I saw,
through-wrought, and wonderfully ornate:
a wonder on the wave --- water become bone.