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Protect us help us forgive us help give
Oh have pity on us—
We that watch the lights of the other worlds,
Openers of curtains eastward when the room is dark
And alone in bed remembering our childhood:
We that have felt the light of the moon on our faces …
Have pity upon us!

How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his silence in our hearts,
By the empty room where he is gone.

Who will overhear our soliloquies?
We are alone in this place.
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head the no-more-winged air,
At his heels—the stone.

They must tell us if it means well …

We have learned the answers, all the answers:
It is the question that we do not know.
We are not wise. We have a way of saying,
What is the meaning of life? No one has answered us.
We have looked behind the leaves too, all the leaves.

… we are alone too much …

We know what our fathers were but not who we are
For the names change and the thorns grow over the houses.
We recognize ourselves by a wrong laugh;
By a trick we have of resembling something. Otherwise
There are strange words and a face in the mirror.
We know
Something we have forgotten too that comforts us.

Yea-sayeth me this earth, this green
Like music doth consent to me,
The moon that standeth on the hill,
The hollow sea.
How shall we learn what it is that our hearts believe in?
And they say we all die but death is a mystery.
Death is a gesture away from us. Death is a cry
And no sound. They have their backs to us going.
We do not know if earth stifles or infinite
Winds have blown the words of it all away.

Come down into the crumbling loam,
Come home into the curving wave,
The dark, dear heart, will fondle thee,
The earth will kiss thee in the grave.

I hope all will be well. We must be patient …

We must find a word for it men can say at night,
And a face for the dark brow.
We must find a thing we can know for the world changes.
We must believe, for it is not always sure.

Why then, let's take it. Look, let's all smile once,
All smile into each other's smiling, all
As men smile into mirrors slowly smile …
That's better. That's more comfortable.
We aren't
Afraid now. Are we? Take it. There.
Like
that!

Oh! have pity upon us …
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