The Little Review, October 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 7)Various
General
The Little Review, October 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 7)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
I saw the white face of a dead love moving beyond the soft shapes that
swayed unseen; drifting away like a mute pain and searching in vain for
me, in vain.
I ran, but there was no place to run; for the monster day ran after,
glaring like a white torment, shouting and scampering after, and there
was no place to hide.
Now the day was a white grave opened to me. Now it was a wide wave
breaking over me.
And now it was a great bird, white-breasted and grey-pinioned, flying
after me and after, bearing my sorrow in its blue beak; racing after me
until its heart burst in the west and it sank, bleeding gorgeously
across the sky.
And still I ran; but now the night came, running after, and there was no
place to hide from my sorrow.
I fled in the streets before the darkness. But the stars found me and
the trees loomed after me and the houselights followed me and the
darkness wept around me—and they were my sorrow.
But there on the distant verge, where the night sinks exhausted into the
blood-red arms of the white monster leaping over the world again, I
fell; deep I fell.
Far into a hidden land where I lay hidden; hidden in a field of black
flowers that were threaded with purple veins and green floating like
thin worms about me.
Autumn Song
My heart scatters tears over the dark day. The dull silvered poplar
leaves float in the air like dead butterflies.
It is the autumn come again, speaking with its soft-tongued winds to the
trees and to me.
It is cold. I have lost my warmth. I have lost thee. And the autumn has
come again to tell me of it.
Listen to the sad-tongued winds. See the storm faltering in the street.
It is cold.
It is the autumn come again, the autumn in whose wild sad treasures we
once laughed; once when your hot hands reached out to me like a bright
cry mocking the somber lisping of the twilight season.
Where are the songs I sang, the songs that leaped out of flame? Do they
echo still in your listening ears? Do they fall like warm tears in your
heart?
See the winds droop wearily into the trembling tree arms. See the street
grows pale. A dying panoply drifts across the grey-girthed sky.
Ho, Life, I have still a song for you. Though you come whispering to me
from the golden tombs of youth, from the scarlet graves of love, I will
make of the lament you bring me—music. I will make of the dull tears you
bring me—lyrics. I will clothe the grey ghosts of sorrow in rich
trappings.
For it is only she who hath died. It is only she whom I loved with all
my soul. Though my heart scatter tears over the dark day they are the
tears of plenty. For her death hath enriched me.
For the autumn is come again speaking with its soft-tongued winds to the
trees and to me things I have never heard before; things that her white
breasts never told me; things that her burning lips never said to me;
wild, sad things that the flame from whence my songs once leaped never
held for me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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