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(From Look! We Have Come Through! 1918)
I COME, my little one, closer up against me, | |
| Creep right up, with your round head pushed in my breast. | |
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| How I love all of you! Do you feel me wrap you | |
| Up with myself and my warmth, like a flame round the wick? | |
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| And how I am not at all, except a flame that mounts off you. | 5 |
| Where I touch you, I flame into being;—but is it me, or you? | |
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| That round head pushed in my chest, like a nut in its socket, | |
| And I the swift bracts that sheathe it: those breasts, those thighs and knees, | |
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| Those shoulders so warm and smooth: I feel that I | |
| Am a sunlight upon them, that shines them into being. | 10 |
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| But how lovely to be you! Creep closer in, that I am more. | |
| I spread over you! How lovely, your round head, your arms, | |
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| Your breasts, your knees and feet! I feel that we | |
| Are a bonfire of oneness, me flame flung leaping round you, | |
| You the core of the fire, crept into me. | 15 |
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II AND oh, my little one, you whom I enfold, | |
| How quaveringly I depend on you, to keep me alive, | |
| Like a flame on a wick! | |
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| I, the man who enfolds you and holds you close, | |
| How my soul cleaves to your bosom as I clasp you, | 20 |
| The very quick of my being! | |
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| Suppose you didn’t want me! I should sink down | |
| Like a light that has no sustenance | |
| And sinks low. | |
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| Cherish me, my tiny one, cherish me who enfold you. | 25 |
| Nourish me, and endue me, I am only of you, | |
| I am your issue. | |
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| How full and big like a robust, happy flame | |
| When I enfold you, and you creep into me, | |
| And my life is fierce at its quick | 30 |
| Where it comes off you! | |
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III MY little one, my big one, | |
| My bird, my brown sparrow in my breast. | |
| My squirrel clutching in to me; | |
| My pigeon, my little one, so warm | 35 |
| 5o close, breathing so still. | |
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| My little one, my big one, | |
| I, who am so fierce and strong, enfolding you, | |
| If you start away from my breast, and leave me, | |
| How suddenly I shall go down into nothing | 40 |
| Like a flame that falls of a sudden. | |
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| And you will be before me, tall and towering, | |
| And I shall be wavering uncertain | |
| Like a sunken flame that grasps for support. | |
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IV BUT now I am full and strong and certain | 45 |
| With you there firm at the core of me | |
| Keeping me. | |
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| How sure I feel, how warm and strong and happy | |
| For the future! How sure the future is within me; | |
| I am like a seed with a perfect flower enclosed. | 50 |
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| I wonder what it will be, | |
| What will come forth of us. | |
| What flower, my love? | |
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| No matter, I am so happy, | |
| I feel like a firm, rich, healthy root, | 55 |
| Rejoicing in what is to come. | |
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| How I depend on you utterly | |
| My little one, my big one! | |
| How everything that will be, will not be of me, | |
| Nor of either of us, | 60 |
| But of both of us. | |
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V AND think, there will something come forth from us. | |
| We two, folded so small together, | |
| There will something come forth from us. | |
| Children, acts, utterance | 65 |
| Perhaps only happiness. | |
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| Perhaps only happiness will come forth from us. | |
| Old sorrow, and new happiness. | |
| Only that one newness. | |
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| But that is all I want. | 70 |
| And I am sure of that. | |
| We are sure of that. | |
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