Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

The yet undone, become the unwritten
By the activity of others
And the immobile pen of ourselves
Lifted, in postponed readiness,
Over the yet unsmooth paper of time—
Themes of the writing-table now,
All those implicit projects
By our minds rescued from enactment,
That lost literature which only death reads.

And we expect works of one another
Of exceeding not so much loveliness
Or fame among our physical sighs
As quietness, eventful
Not beyond thought, which moves unstrangely,
Without the historic sword-flash.

The need to confide
Which Christ had
And every bird to bird
Though secretless their frantic code —

Shall I like meteor speed?
Flared martyr to companionhood
Streaking towards some Siberia of love,
There to fall stony, for the books to say:
" These homeless stars upon arrival turn
Instantly cool, are earth.
The danger to ourselves is less than theirs
Of fierce extinguishment
Before precipitant despair
Gains grave among us.
Seldom in daily midst the fevered bolt
Seeks catastrophic bosoming.
Sometimes we hear . . .

Equally dismal rain and sunshine—
If the hours are hours of waiting
To say for certain: you, and I.
Happily there is this sure we,
Happily there is this love,
This chosen ambiguity,
Until the weather knows its mind.

Meanwhile this to-day,
To succeed never beyond the weather—
Until it climates death,
That double clarity
Of difference.

1

Woman, reviling term
Of Man unto the female germ,
And Man, reproach of Woman
In this colloquy,
Have grown so contrary
That to have love
We must combine chastely next
Among the languages
Where calling is obscene
And words no more than mean.

2

" Yes!" to you is in the same breath
" No! No!" to Death.
And your " Yes! Yes!" to me
Is " No!" to Death once angrily.
The Universe, leaning from a balcony,
Says: " Death comes home to me
Covered with glory, when with such love."

No more are lovely palaces
And Taj-Mahal is old.
The listening tenements,
The wakeful entertainments,
Waited wide and many ages
For the spirits of the promises
That more than men would come,
Would come the visitants evoked
By lovely palaces
And such emblazoned places
Men would never light for men.

A little surer now you know
They do not come the way you go.
And better build you and more soberly—
Houses fitter for you to leave
Than to receive
The more than haughty hosts
Of the imperishable ghosts,

The formulas of recognition
Apply themselves to memories.
There's where,
There's when,
There's there.

Yes, a nice time.
I met three fishermen out on the bay
Who couldn't understand language.
I found a mercadon —
What's a mercadon? —
And dined with native nobility,
But there's no place like home!

Yes, true-love — not travel.
It was a sky
Not just to look at
But prove —
If possible,
If possible.

I went up of love,
I fell down of loves.
There's no place like home!

My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of felony,
Of thee I sing —
Land where my fathers fried
Young witches and applied
Whips to the Quaker's hide
And made him spring.

My knavish country, thee,
Land where the thief is free,
Thy laws I love;
I love thy thieving bills
That tap the people's tills;
I love thy mob whose will's
All laws above.

Let Federal employees
And rings rob all they please,
The whole year long.
Let office-holders make
Their piles and judges rake
Our coin. For Jesus' sake,

As balmly as the breath of her you love
When deep between her breasts it comes to you.

Oh! May sits crowned with hawthorn-flower,
And is Love's month, they say;
And Love's the fruit that is ripened best
By ladies' eyes in May.