CLEAR POOLS
What is this bitterness of love that scatters dust in the eyes?
What this absence that shrivels the heart and the blood?
What these cries that stop the ears with their pain?
Let us take our love unto God,
He understands, He has fashioned us and is kind;
How well He knows that love must carry its burden
If it would run to bathe in clear pools and lift its eyes to the stars!
What are we that we should not know that we are His,
And of Him our passion and of Him our tears?
His breast is deep and He will fold us there
In the mystery of His dark, in the miracle of His closeness.
Distance from us knows He not nor space,
And our love which is His how can it be divided from itself?
Are we not one even as we are His?
What is that cry?
Is it sorrow or is it the wind upon the waters?
What is this light that flows like a brook?
How well He knows that love must carry its burden,
If it would run to bathe in clear pools and lift its eyes to the stars!
THESE TWO
Sometimes when I am alone at night
I put my hand upon my heart;
But it matters little to me that these two are one
From the deep inflow of the rushing blood
Even to the extremity of each living finger
Swung from hollowed palm and flexible wrist:—
This heart and hand that are so wonderful,
So joined in life; so fashioned
In the beat of pulse
And passionate discernment of touch for joy,
So separate and yet not to be divided.
It is not of them I am thinking
When I place my hand on my heart
In the lonely night.
In its weight
Again I feel your head lying on my breast
And in its touch the oval of your childlike face.
You are wide-eyed once more,
With those gray eyes of the sea
Full of space and the shadows of birds’ wings
And the terror of known depths of human tragedy;
You are wide-eyed now
Looking into the dark with me,
Wondering about the night.
I cannot believe that it is only my own hand upon my heart
And that we are separated;
I cannot understand the use of my own fingers
Or the beating of my own pulse;
And I take my hand away
And lie alone in the dark
And suffer.