Louise Bogan

Women have no wilderness in them, They are provident instead, Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread. They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass, They do not hear Snow water going down under culverts Shallow and clear. They wait, when they should turn to journeys, They stiffen, when they should bend. They use against themselves that benevolence To which no man is friend. They cannot think of so many crops to a field Or of clean wood cleft by an axe. Their love is an eager meaninglessness Too tense, or too lax. They hear in every whisper that speaks to them A shout and a cry. As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills They should let it go by.

The dark is thrown Back from the brightness, like hair Cast over a shoulder. I am alone, Four years older; Like the chairs and the walls Which I once watched brighten With you beside me. I was to waken Never like this, whatever came or was taken. The stalk grows, the year beats on the wind. Apples come, and the month for their fall. The bark spreads, the roots tighten. Though today be the last Or tomorrow all, You will not mind. That I may not remember Does not matter. I shall not be with you again. What we knew, even now Must scatter And be ruined, and blow Like dust in the rain. You have been dead a long season And have less than desire Who were lover with lover; And I have life—that old reason To wait for what comes, To leave what is over.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations This youth too long has heard the break Of waters in a land of change. He goes to see what suns can make From soil more indurate indurate hardened and strange. He cuts what holds his days together And shuts him in, as lock on lock: The arrowed vane announcing weather, The tripping racket tripping racket either a paradox: light and easy din, or, light and easy motion (as of a dance) of a clock; Seeking, I think, a light that waits Still as a lamp upon a shelf, — A land with hills like rocky gates Where no sea leaps upon itself. But he will find that nothing dares To be enduring, save where, south Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares On beauty with a rusted mouth, — Where something dreadful and another Look quietly upon each other.

Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind, Straight sides, carven knees, Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm Or remonstrances. Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine In a pattern of angles. The quill of the fountain falters, woods rake on the sky Their brusque tangles. The birds walk by slowly, circling the marble girl, The golden quails, The pheasants, closed up in their arrowy wings, Dragging their sharp tails. The inquietudes of the sap and of the blood are spent. What is forsaken will rest. But her heel is lifted,—she would flee,—the whistle of the birds Fails on her breast.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook. Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease The lead and marble figures watch the show Of yet another summer loath to go Although the scythes hang in the apple trees. Now that I have your face by heart, I look. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read In the black chords upon a dulling page Music that is not meant for music’s cage, Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed. The staves are shuttled over with a stark Unprinted silence. In a double dream I must spell out the storm, the running stream. The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see The wharves with their great ships and architraves; The rigging and the cargo and the slaves On a strange beach under a broken sky. O not departure, but a voyage done! The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

She has no need to fear the fall Of harvest from the laddered reach Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing From the steep beach. Nor hold to pain's effrontery Her body's bulwark, stern and savage, Nor be a glass, where to forsee Another's ravage. What she has gathered, and what lost, She will not find to lose again. She is possessed by time, who once Was loved by men.

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees, Facing a sheer sky. Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike, Sun and reflection wheeled by. When the bare eyes were before me And the hissing hair, Held up at a window, seen through a door. The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead Formed in the air. This is a dead scene forever now. Nothing will ever stir. The end will never brighten it more than this, Nor the rain blur. The water will always fall, and will not fall, And the tipped bell make no sound. The grass will always be growing for hay Deep on the ground. And I shall stand here like a shadow Under the great balanced day, My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind, And does not drift away.

I do not know where either of us can turn Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other. I do not know how we can bear The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon, Or many trees shaken together in the darkness. We shall wish not to be alone And that love were not dispersed and set free— Though you defeat me, And I be heavy upon you. But like earth heaped over the heart Is love grown perfect. Like a shell over the beat of life Is love perfect to the last. So let it be the same Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another; Let us know this for leavetaking, That I may not be heavy upon you, That you may blind me no more.

Now that I know That passion warms little Of flesh in the mold, And treasure is brittle, I’ll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound. August 1922

When beauty breaks and falls asunder I feel no grief for it, but wonder. When love, like a frail shell, lies broken, I keep no chip of it for token. I never had a man for friend Who did not know that love must end. I never had a girl for lover Who could discern when love was over. What the wise doubt, the fool believes— Who is it, then, that love deceives?