Women of the older generation, who knew
The full doom of loving and not being able to take back.
Who understood at last what it was to be told to die.
Now that the graves are made, and covered;
Now that in England pansies and such-like grow on the graves of women;
Now that in England is silence, where before was a moving of soft-skirted women,
Women with eyes that were gentle in olden belief in love;
Now then that all their yearning is hushed, and covered over with earth.
England seems like one grave to me.
And I, I sit on this high American desert
With dark-wrapped Rocky Mountains motionless squatting around in a ring,
Remembering I told them to die, to sink into the grave in England,
The gentle-kneed women.
So now I whisper: Come away,
Come away from the place of graves, come west,
Women,
Women whom I loved and told to die.
Come back to me now,
Now the divided yearning is over;
Now you are husbandless indeed, no more husband to cherish like a child
And wrestle with for the prize of perfect love.
No more children to launch in a world you mistrust.
Now you need know in part
No longer, or carry the burden of a man on your heart,
Or the burden of Man writ large.
Now you are disemburdened of Man and a man
Come back to me.
Now you are free of the toils of a would-be-perfect love
Come to me and be still.
Come back then, you who were wives and mothers
And always virgins
Overlooked.
Come back then, mother, my love, whom I told to die.
It was only I who saw the virgin you
That had no home.
The overlooked virgin,
My love.