Now you seem fully under my heart's sway. I have slipped through the magic of your mesh Freed once again and strengthened by your flesh, You seem a weak thing for a strong man's play. Yet I know now that we shall scarce have parted When I shall think of you half heavy hearted. I know our partings. You will faintly smile And look at me with eyes that have no guile, Or have too much, and pass into the sphere Where you keep independent life meanwhile. How do you live without me, is the fear? You do not lean upon me, ask my love, or wonder Of other loves I may have hidden under These casual renewals of our love. And if I loved you I should lie in flame, Ari, go about re-murmuring your name, And these are things a man should be above. And as I lie here on the imminent brink Of soul's surrender into your soul's power, And in the white light of the morning hour I see what life would be if we should link Our lives together in a marriage pact: For we would walk along a boundless tract Of perfect hell; but your disloyalty Would be of spirit, for I have not won Mastered and bound your spirit unto me. And if you had a lover in the way I have you it would not by half betray My love as does your vague and chainless thought, Which wanders, soars or vanishes, returns, Changes, astonishes, or chills or burns, Is unresisting, plastic, freely wrought Under my hands yet to no unison Of my life and of yours. Upon this brink I watch you now and think Of all that has been preached or sung or spoken Of woman's tragedy in woman's fall; And all the pictures of a woman broken By man's superior strength. And there you stand Your heart and life as firmly in command Of your resolve as mine is, knowing all Of man, the master, and his power to harm, His rulership of spheres material, Bread, customs, rules of fair repute-- What are they all against your slender arm? Which long since plucked the fruit Of good and evil, and of life at last And now of Life. For dancing you have cast Veil after veil of ideals or pretense With which men clothe the being feminine To satisfy their lordship or their sense Of ownership and hide the things of sin-- You have thrown them aside veil after veil; And there you stand unarmored, weirdly frail, Yet strong as nature, making comical The poems and the tales of woman's fall.... You nod your head, you smile, I feel the air Made by the closing door. I lie and stare At the closed door. One, two, your tuftèd steps Die on the velvet of the outer hall. You have escaped. And I would not pursue. Though we are but caged creatures, I and you-- A male and female tiger in a zoo. For I shall wait you. Life himself will track Your wanderings and bring you back, And shut you up again with me and cage Our love and hatred and our silent rage. SAVING A WOMAN: ONE PHASE