| |
| BEING so tired, it is hard to hide from you; | |
| It is hard to walk any longer in the night and the wind. | |
| I have gone among brown trees, I have crunched the blue | |
| Frost-bitten grass under my feet, I have stood | |
| In parted thickets, caught in the crackling leaves, | 5 |
| I have seen the brushpiles on the ridges fired, | |
| I have watched the twisted smoke that weaves | |
| Blue strands in the black branches of the wood; | |
| And now, being tired, | |
| Being tired now and worn enough for rest, | 10 |
| Would it not be safe, would it not be very good | |
| Tonight, to find it in your breast, | |
| In your wise breast where this is understood? | |
| |
| Do you remember another night of wind, | |
| Moonlight and wind, when it was all | 15 |
| The sky could do to keep from reeling upon us in shame, | |
| When, breathless, we held it there | |
| From slipping down about us with your hair? | |
| Do you remember a night last fall | |
| When the wind whirled us and whetted us to flame, | 20 |
| And whirled the leaves and whetted us to flame, | |
| Whipped out your dress and would not let us be, | |
| And drove us along the prairie, two shadows clinging, | |
| And dropped us at the foot of a tree? | |
| |
| That was September before the frost: | 25 |
| In the morning the prairie was gray with mist | |
| And the grass was matted white where we had lain. | |
| And the arms of the elm, the grizzled arms of the elm, | |
| Pawed at the wind for something that was lost, | |
| And knotted up with pain. | 30 |
| |
| Fall comes to fall again, | |
| And I walk alone, I walk alone in the wind…. | |
| I cannot master the beauty of the night. | |
| I walk alone. The poplar fingers rise | |
| Tall and awful among white glittering stars. | 35 |
| Surely this is the most sorrowful delight | |
| Of any man, to walk alone with a dream. | |
| Do you hear the ripple singing in the stream? | |
| The beauty of the poplars strikes me down. | |
| The wind over the grass—I had not known | 40 |
| The wind was such a lonely thing. | |
| The wind cleaves me with beauty to the bone, | |
| And the gray clouds that brush the fields and fling | |
| Gray darkness on to the driven prairie, and fold | |
| Their lonely silence around the hills, and fly | 45 |
| On to the upper night, to the upper air— | |
| They have beat me clean, they have beat my body cold | |
| With beauty. Do you hear the wild geese cry? | |
| |
| And now the dark is heavy in my head, | |
| And in my heart all the sorrows have come home. | 50 |
| I am tired—you do not know how tired I come. | |
| You would not care tonight? You would not care, | |
| But let your hand wander through my hair? | |
| There would be no hurt now, we are both too tired. | |
| I would finger the soft silk of your dress the same | 55 |
| As long ago, when you were first desired, | |
| As long ago when the wind whirled us to flame. | |
| |
| For we know the bitter tune the wind sings; | |
| There will be silence now, there will be rest, | |
| And eyes will heal after the wind stings, | 60 |
| And I shall hear your heart under your breast | |
| Moving across time with a great flow. | |
| And we shall hear no more the wind’s calling, | |
| But only the silence of it falling and falling, | |
| And always the room will throb quietly and slow. | 65 |
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