My love, you're going away-- Let me tell you how it is with me; I want to touch you--somehow touch you once before I die-- Let me tell you how it is with me. I do not want to work, I want to be; Do not want to make a rose or make a poem-- Want to lie upon the earth and know. (_closes her eyes_) Stop doing that!--words going into patterns; They do it sometimes when I let come what's there. Thoughts take pattern--then the pattern is the thing. But let me tell you how it is with me. (_it flows again_) All that I do or say--it is to what it comes from, A drop lifted from the sea. I want to lie upon the earth and know. But--scratch a little dirt and make a flower; Scratch a bit of brain--something like a poem. (_covering her face_) Stop _doing_ that. Help me stop doing that! TOM: (_and from the place where she had carried him_) Don't talk at all. Lie still and know-- And know that I am knowing. CLAIRE: Yes; but we are so weak we have to talk; To talk--to touch. Why can't I rest in knowing I would give my life to reach you? That has--all there is. But I must--put my timid hands upon you, Do something about infinity. Oh, let what will flow into us, And fill us full--and leave us still. Wring me dry, And let me fill again with life more pure. To know--to feel, And do nothing with what I feel and know-- That's being good. That's nearer God. (_drenched in the feeling that has flowed through her--but surprised--helpless_) Why, I said your thing, didn't I? Opened my life to bring you to me, and what came--is what sends you away. TOM: No! What came is what holds us together. What came is what saves us from ever going apart. (_brokenly_) My beautiful one. You--you brave flower of all our knowing. CLAIRE: I am not a flower. I am too torn. If you have anything--help me. Breathe, Breathe the healing oneness, and let me know in calm. (_with a sob his head rests upon her_) CLAIRE: (_her hands on his head, but looking far_) Beauty--you pure one thing. Breathe--Let me know in calm. Then--trouble me, trouble me, for other moments--in farther calm. (_slow, motionless, barely articulate_) TOM: (_as she does not move he lifts his head. And even as he looks at her, she does not move, nor look at him_) Claire--(_his hand out to her, a little afraid_) You went away from me then. You are away from me now.