Old Woman
GAUNT woman with pinched, palsied hands,
Cramped fingers once their nimble slaves,
Did your poor feet once print the sands
With lovely dimpled curves like waves?
I’m told men once would march to wars,
Your name upon their lips, would kneel
Rapt by your eyes that fleered the stars,
Where passions leapt like sparks from steel.
I’m told snow hawthorn massed in bloom
Could not cool whiter than your hands,
Or candles crackling up the gloom
Of churches in chill twilit lands.
Gaunt woman, why so tense your mouth?
Is it your blistered heart that speaks?
Did colour fluid as the South
Light those emaciated cheeks?
I’m told your voice once trembled clear
And frail withal as linnet’s wings....
And now your voice is but the mere
Vague echo of forgotten things.
“Once lovers bruised each blue-veined breast
And charred my body as ’twere coal.
Now I would lay me down to rest.
May Christ receive my wrinkled soul!”
Cold Joints
I
IN mental constipation shivering,
He went into the fields, where he could sing
To ease the sobbing of his plangent mind,
With desolate, cracked voice, for they were kind.
The sky an ashen cup of neutral air;
Black specks of surly rooks whirred cawing there
And sombre clots of writhing, stunted trees
Stretched withered fingers, creaking traceries
Of mazed arms multitudinous; their moan
A memory that he was not alone.