Listen since you know already All but the subtlest matters. How you laugh! You know these too? Well, only I can tell them. First 'twas a piteous thing to see a man So love a woman, see a living thing So love another. Why he could not touch My hand but that his heart went up ten beats. His eyes would grow as bright as flames, his breath Come short when speaking. When he felt my breast Crush soft around him he would reel and walk Away from me, while I stood like a snake Poised for the strike, as quiet and possessed As a dead breeze. And you can have me wholly, And pet and pat me like a favored child, And let me go my way, while you turn back To what you left for me. Not so with him: I was all through his blood, had made his flesh My flesh, his nerves, brain, soul all mine at last, Dreams, thoughts, emotions, hungers all my own. So that he lived two lives, his own and mine, With one poor body, which he gave to me. Save that he could not give what I pushed back Into his hands to use for me and live My pities, hatreds, loves and passions with. I loved all this and thrived upon it, still I did not love him. Then why marry him? Why don't you see? It meant so much to him. And 'twas a little thing for me to do. His loneliness, his hunger, his great passion That showed in his poor eyes, his broken breath, His chivalry, his gifts, his poignant letters, His failing health, why even woman's cruelty Cannot deny such passion. Woman's cruelty Takes other means for finding its expression. And mine found its expression--you have guessed And so I tell you all. We were married then. He made a sacrament of our nuptials, Knelt with closed eyes beside the bed, my lips Pressed to his brow and throat. Unveiled my breast And looked, then closed his eyes. He did not take me As man takes his possession, nature's way, In triumph of life, in lightning, no, he came A suppliant, a worshipper, and whispered: "What angel child may lie upon the breast Of this it's angel mother." Well, you see The tears came in my eyes, for pity of him, Who made so much of what I had to give, And could give easily whether 'twas my rapture To give or to withhold. And in that moment Contempt of which I had been scarcely conscious Lying diffused like dew around my heart Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup To one bright drop of vital power, where He could not see it, scarcely knew that something Gradually drugged the potion that he drank In life with me.