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| MONSIEUR Y., the artist, has haunting hands— | |
| Fingers that are unforgetable. | |
| I have sat for arrested spaces, | |
| Pondering the influence of their inhibitions— | |
| Gazing at a battlefield where emotions | 5 |
| Had been in tragic conflict. | |
| The hands are to the first glance decently formed, | |
| But they awaken curiosity rather than admiration, | |
| For the essence of their exquisiteness | |
| Is not quickly to be felt. | 10 |
| Their beauty is draped—as all enduring beauty | |
| Must be—with indifference. | |
| |
| Monsieur Y. has always been indulgent to me. | |
| His studio I seek as an asylum | |
| From the wolves—my dear friends. | 15 |
| He says he is not my friend, | |
| And for the whim I have believed it. | |
| One November afternoon when I knew he would be | |
| Heartily engrossed on his new canvas, | |
| And I was chilled with Broadway’s ineptitudes, | 20 |
| I sought his presence. | |
| It was even a chillier welcome I received, | |
| But there is sometimes a flame in frigidity | |
| That gives the longed-for social shock. | |
| |
| He lit the lamp for the tea kettle, | 25 |
| And went back to work, | |
| Leaving me to the half-shadowed intimacies of housewifery. | |
| The tea service is simply done, | |
| So I was soon free to regard him, | |
| And his brusqueness stirred me to protest. | 30 |
| I parried first—for I am not stupid— | |
| And asked whether he thought | |
| It was a strain of pity for the fallen Madonnas | |
| He painted so admirably that had given his hands | |
| An immaculate augustness that was smoothed away | 35 |
| Into a catholic simplicity. | |
| That was grandiose, but it won a rejoinder. | |
| I had not whispered of the spirituality, | |
| But it was that he offered me. | |
| I had seized the nuance. | 40 |
| “You have an insistent way,” he said, | |
| “But insistence has its boundaries. | |
| Yet you are a mirror, and a mirror | |
| Is sometimes a solution. | |
| It glimmers back one’s futility. | 45 |
| I like my hands more than you do, | |
| For they are the symbols | |
| Of the only triumph I shall ever know. | |
| They are the trophies of my conquering. | |
| A long time ago I was absorbed with love for a woman, | 50 |
| Who was merely touched with fragrant pleasure | |
| Because I worshipped her. | |
| She, too, was in love, but not with me. | |
| We met often, | |
| And spent long hours together and alone, | 55 |
| When only the sheerest intervals separated us. | |
| We luncheoned, we dined, we theatred together. | |
| We walked and talked. And we tea-cupped. | |
| She gave me of the sight of her loveliness | |
| In abundant generosity because I adored her. | 60 |
| And all the time I had my hands. All the hours | |
| I was at her side they ached to touch, | |
| To move over her—not to grasp in bestial, imperative fashion, | |
| But to finger, to question the softness of her flesh, | |
| To sing as they crept over her, | 65 |
| To give the quick, wild quivers of possession. | |
| But because of the pride of the saffron highway | |
| I never touched her; | |
| I held back through all the evasions of our communion. | |
| She came to like me very much, though I never | 70 |
| Thrilled her to a fine surrender. | |
| But it has worked its way out— | |
| For she was brought to realize | |
| That because I did not make a false tempo | |
| With the hungry hands there was homage to be paid them. | 75 |
| Now, I think it is really time for you to go. | |
| |
| There was the secret of his perfect hands— | |
| They were still full of yearning blood. | |
| All his desire had leaped out into them, | |
| And it remained there— | 80 |
| The hands were two lovers, vainly waiting for their hour. | |
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