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Home  »  Renascence and Other Poems  »  2. Interim

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). Renascence and Other Poems. 1917.

2. Interim

THE ROOM is full of you!—As I came in

And closed the door behind me, all at once

A something in the air, intangible,

Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed

Each other room’s dear personality.

The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—

The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—

Has strangled that habitual breath of home

Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;

And wheresoe’er I look is hideous change.

Save here. Here ’twas as if a weed-choked gate

Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped

Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange,

Sweet garden of a thousand years ago

And suddenly thought, “I have been here before!”

You are not here. I know that you are gone,

And will not ever enter here again.

And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,

Your silent step must wake across the hall;

If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes

Would kiss me from the door.—So short a time

To teach my life its transposition to

This difficult and unaccustomed key!—

The room is as you left it; your last touch—

A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself

As saintly—hallows now each simple thing;

Hallows and glorifies, and glows between

The dust’s grey fingers like a shielded light.

There is your book, just as you laid it down,

Face to the table,—I cannot believe

That you are gone!—Just then it seemed to me

You must be here. I almost laughed to think

How like reality the dream had been;

Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.

That book, outspread, just as you laid it down!

Perhaps you thought, “I wonder what comes next,

And whether this or this will be the end”;

So rose, and left it, thinking to return.

Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed

Out of the room, rocked silently a while

Ere it again was still. When you were gone

Forever from the room, perhaps that chair,

Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while,

Silently, to and fro…

And here are the last words your fingers wrote,

Scrawled in broad characters across a page

In this brown book I gave you. Here your hand,

Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.

Here with a looping knot you crossed a “t,”

And here another like it, just beyond

These two eccentric “e’s.” You were so small,

And wrote so brave a hand!
How strange it seems

That of all words these are the words you chose!

And yet a simple choice; you did not know

You would not write again. If you had known—

But then, it does not matter,—and indeed

If you had known there was so little time

You would have dropped your pen and come to me

And this page would be empty, and some phrase

Other than this would hold my wonder now.

Yet, since you could not know, and it befell

That these are the last words your fingers wrote,

There is a dignity some might not see

In this, “I picked the first sweet-pea to-day.”

To-day! Was there an opening bud beside it

You left until to-morrow?—O my love,

The things that withered,—and you came not back!

That day you filled this circle of my arms

That now is empty. (O my empty life!)

That day—that day you picked the first sweet-pea,—

And brought it in to show me! I recall

With terrible distinctness how the smell

Of your cool gardens drifted in with you.

I know, you held it up for me to see

And flushed because I looked not at the flower,

But at your face; and when behind my look

You saw such unmistakable intent

You laughed and brushed your flower against my lips.

(You were the fairest thing God ever made,

I think.) And then your hands above my heart

Drew down its stem into a fastening,

And while your head was bent I kissed your hair.

I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands!

Somehow I cannot seem to see them still.

Somehow I cannot seem to see the dust

In your bright hair.) What is the need of Heaven

When earth can be so sweet?—If only God

Had let us love,—and show the world the way!

Strange cancellings must ink th’ eternal books

When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!

That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is.

It seems to me I laid it down somewhere,

And yet,—I am not sure. I am not sure,

Even, if it was white or pink; for then

’Twas much like any other flower to me,

Save that it was the first. I did not know,

Then, that it was the last. If I had known—

But then, it does not matter. Strange how few,

After all’s said and done, the things that are

Of moment.
Few indeed! When I can make

Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!

“I had you and I have you now no more.”

There, there it dangles,—where’s the little truth

That can for long keep footing under that

When its slack syllables tighten to a thought?

Here, let me write it down! I wish to see

Just how a thing like that will look on paper!

“I had you and I have you now no more.”

O little words, how can you run so straight

Across the page, beneath the weight you bear?

How can you fall apart, whom such a theme

Has bound together, and hereafter aid

In trivial expression, that have been

So hideously dignified?—Would God

That tearing you apart would tear the thread

I strung you on! Would God—O God, my mind

Stretches asunder on this merciless rack

Of imagery! O, let me sleep a while!

Would I could sleep, and wake to find me back

In that sweet summer afternoon with you.

Summer? ’Tis summer still by the calendar!

How easily could God, if He so willed,

Set back the world a little turn or two!

Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again!

We were so wholly one I had not thought

That we could die apart. I had not thought

That I could move,—and you be stiff and still!

That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb!

I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof

In some firm fabric, woven in and out;

Your golden filaments in fair design

Across my duller fibre. And to-day

The shining strip is rent; the exquisite

Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart

Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled

In the damp earth with you. I have been torn

In two, and suffer for the rest of me.

What is my life to me? And what am I

To life,—a ship whose star has guttered out?

A Fear that in the deep night starts awake

Perpetually, to find its senses strained

Against the taut strings of the quivering air,

Awaiting the return of some dread chord?

Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor;

All else were contrast,—save that contrast’s wall

Is down, and all opposed things flow together

Into a vast monotony, where night

And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life,

Are synonyms. What now—what now to me

Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers

That clutter up the world? You were my song!

Now, let discord scream! You were my flower!

Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not

Plant things above your grave—(the common balm

Of the conventional woe for its own wound!)

Amid sensations rendered negative

By your elimination stands to-day,

Certain, unmixed, the element of grief;

I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truth

With travesties of suffering, nor seek

To effigy its incorporeal bulk

In little wry-faced images of woe.

I cannot call you back; and I desire

No utterance of my immaterial voice.

I cannot even turn my face this way

Or that, and say, “My face is turned to you”;

I know not where you are, I do not know

If heaven hold you or if earth transmute,

Body and soul, you into earth again;

But this I know:—not for one second’s space

Shall I insult my sight with visionings

Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed

Beholds, self-conjured in the empty air.

Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears!

My sorrow shall be dumb!

—What do I say?

God! God!—God pity me! Am I gone mad

That I should spit upon a rosary?

Am I become so shrunken? Would to God

I too might feel that frenzied faith whose touch

Makes temporal the most enduring grief;

Though it must walk awhile, as is its wont,

With wild lamenting! Would I too might weep

Where weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreaths

For its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it is

That keeps the world alive. If all at once

Faith were to slacken,—that unconscious faith

Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone

Of all believing,—birds now flying fearless

Across would drop in terror to the earth;

Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins

Would tangle in the frantic hands of God

And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!

O God, I see it now, and my sick brain

Staggers and swoons! How often over me

Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight

In which I see the universe unrolled

Before me like a scroll and read thereon

Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl

Dizzily round and round and round and round,

Like tops across a table, gathering speed

With every spin, to waver on the edge

One instant—looking over—and the next

To shudder and lurch forward out of sight—

……

Ah, I am worn out—I am wearied out—

It is too much—I am but flesh and blood,

And I must sleep. Though you were dead again,

I am but flesh and blood, and I must sleep.