Is the reaction of forbidden bliss, It is most true, but you would not degrade My love for you with that analysis, And that alone. For surely God who made Our souls and bodies so meant we should rise Through their desires, and does God pervade This glowing mass of life, these starry skies With other power? Now scorn me, if you will. The unburdened heart has tamed its agonies. MONSIEUR D---- TO THE PSYCHOANALYST In time I’ll tell you all the dreams I’ve had-- But now--well, let me think! O yes three times I’ve dreamed a creature with a dragon’s head, Which was her head as well, for so it seemed, Gemmed with her brazen eyes half luminous And half opaque, slate colored, lay across My breast and hurt my heart, and breathed her breath From half-dead, livid overlapping lips (As when you crush a snake’s head jaws will lie Awry and out of plumb) like pestilence Right in my nostrils. This interpreted Means characters are breaths, and most are bad When closely known. Such breath suits well the dragon, But would not suit her, so you’d think to see How fair her face, how seeming fair her soul. So let me tell you. All my hair is gray, My youth is gone, pretense will work no more. I’m fifty-seven, yet I cling to youth, Because I cling to love, have never known Aught but successions of immoderate--what? Some call it lust--you call it libido. Well it is urge, creative fire and drives The artist half-soul mad, as I am mad-- Look how my poor hand trembles, my voice breaks-- No! I’ll go on. I’ll tell you all, be done. Then if you cannot cure me, there’s a balm I know myself. If I had only loved Elizabeth, who wrote me years ago Such pleading letters--every man can win Some woman’s love completely, had she won My love as well! O what a monstrous world Where such envenomed fire is, held by Chance And shot in blindness. So she felt the flame And looked on me, I felt the flame and looked Upon this cockatrice. So as I said I had been teacher, actor, writer, poet, Had seen my face on lithographs, felt warm In every capillary for that face Which seemed star-guided, noble, to be loved, Revered, and thus through self-esteem I bore My failures hoping, buoyed by some success As the swift years went by.