The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Nobody knows you. You don't know yourself. And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with? My own imaginings?

What is the knocking? What is the knocking at the door in the night? It is somebody who wants to do us harm. No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.

Delivered helpless and amazed From the womb of the All, I am waiting dazed For memory to be erased. Then I shall know the Elysium That lies outside the monstrous womb Of time from out of which I come.

Gloire de Dijon When she rises in the morning I linger to watch her; She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window And the sunbeams catch her Glistening white on the shoulders, While down her sides the mellow Golden shadow glows as She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts Sway like full-blown yellow Gloire de Dijon roses. She drips herself with water, and her shoulders Glisten as silver, they crumple up Like wet and falling roses, and I listen For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals. In the window full of sunlight Concentrates her golden shadow Fold on fold, until it glows as Mellow as the glory roses.

So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour Feeling your fingers go Like a rhythmic breeze Over my hair, and tracing my brows, Till I knew you not from a little wind: — I wonder now if God allows Us only one moment of his keys. If only then You could have unlocked the moon on the night, And I baptized myself in the light Of your love; we both have entered then the white Pure passion, and never again.

You are the call and I am the answer, You are the wish, and I the fulfillment, You are the night, and I the day. What else? it is perfect enough. It is perfectly complete, You and I, What more⎼? Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!