Ebb

I KNOW what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Once More Into My Arid Days

(Arid means dry; without rain)

ONCE more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger--the thought of you
Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser is no wise,
I chase your colored phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
Once more [I reach for you]--and there is nothing there.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Union Square

Union Square

WITH the man I love who loves me not,

I walked in the street-lamps' flare;

We watched the world go home that night

In a flood through Union Square.

I leaned to catch the words he said

That were light as a snowflake falling;

Ah well that he never leaned to hear

The words my heart was calling.

And on we walked and on we walked

Past the fiery lights of the picture shows --

Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by

On the errand each man knows.

And on we walked and on we walked,

At the door at last we said good-bye;

I knew by his smile he had not heard

My heart's unuttered cry.

With the man I love who loves me not

I walked in the street-lamps' flare --

But oh, the girls who can ask for love

In the lights of Union Square.

By Sara Teasdale, of course. :)

Absence

Absence

YOUR words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool,
Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool.
Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb,
Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim.
But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties
Now, through the menacing miles, brooding between us lies.
And more than the songs I sing, I await your written word,
To stir my fluent blood as never your presence stirred.

Claude McKay

image srce: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/media/photo/2002-10/5064017.jpg

If you but knew

AH, if you knew how soon and late
My eyes long for a sight of you
Sometimes in passing by my gate
You'd linger until fall of dew,
If you but knew!
Ah, if you knew how sick and sore
My life flags for the want of you,
Straightway you'd enter at the door
And clasp my hand between your two,
If you but knew!
Ah, if you knew how lost and lone
I watch and weep and wait for you,
You'd press my heart close to your own
Till love had healed me through and through,
If you but knew!

mathilde blind