a blotch of pallor stirs beneath the high
square picture-dusk, the window of dark sky.
a sound subdued in the darkness: tears!
as if a bird in difficulty up the valley steers.
"why have you gone to the window? why don't
you sleep?
how you have wakened me! but why, why do
you weep?"
"i am afraid of you, i am afraid, afraid!
there is something in you destroys me—!"
"you have dreamed and are not awake, come here
to me."
"no, i have wakened. it is you, you are cruel to
me!"
"my dear!"—"yes, yes, you are cruel to me. you
cast
a shadow over my breasts that will kill me at last."
"come!"—"no, i'm a thing of life. i give
you armfuls of sunshine, and you won't let me live."
"nay, i'm too sleepy!"—"ah, you are horrible;
you stand before me like ghosts, like a darkness
upright."
"i!"—"how can you treat me so, and love me?
my feet have no hold, you take the sky from above me."
"my dear, the night is soft and eternal, no doubt
you love it!"—"it is dark, it kills me, i am put out."
"my dear, when you cross the street in the sun-
shine, surely
your own small night goes with you. why treat
it so poorly?"
"no, no, i dance in the sun, i'm a thing of life—"
"even then it is dark behind you. turn round,
my wife."
"no, how cruel you are, you people the sunshine
with shadows!"—"with yours i people the
sunshine, yours and mine—"
"in the darkness we all are gone, we are gone
with the trees
and the restless river;—we are lost and gone
with all these."
"but i am myself, i have nothing to do with these."
"come back to bed, let us sleep on our mys-
teries.
"come to me here, and lay your body by mine,
and i will be all the shadow, you the shine.
"come, you are cold, the night has frightened you.
hark at the river! it pants as it hurries through
"the pine-woods. how i love them so, in their
mystery of not-to-be."
"—but let me be myself, not a river or a tree."
"kiss me! how cold you are!—your little breasts
are bubbles of ice. kiss me!—you know how
it rests
"one to be quenched, to be given up, to be gone
in the dark;
to be blown out, to let night dowse the spark.
"but never mind, my love. nothing matters,
save sleep;
save you, and me, and sleep; all the rest will
keep."
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
