Madison Cawein - The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)

Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless,
Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless:
I, with no thought but the day that did lock us in,
Set naked feet ’mid the cottonmouth-moccasin,
Under the roses, the Cherokee, eying me:—
I,—in the heav’n with the egrets that, flying me,
Winging like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly,
Pearl and pale pink: where the mocking-bird tenderly
Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious,
Wandered,—unheeding my steps,—in the odious
Ooze and the venom. I followed the wiry
Violet curve of thy star falling fiery—
So was I lost in night! thus am undone!

Have I not told to her—living alone for her—
Purposed unfoldments of deeds I had sown for her
Here in the soil of my soul? their variety
Endless—and ever she answered with piety.
See! it has come to this—all the tale’s suavity
At the ninth chapter grows hateful with gravity;
Cruel as death all our beautiful history—
Close it!—the final is more than a mystery.—
Yes; I will go to her; yes; and will speak.

I seem to see her still; to see
That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes
From lavender folds, draped dreamily,—
A-blossom with brocaded blooms,—
Some stuff of orient looms.

I seem to hear her speak; and back,
Where sleeps the sun on books and piles
Of porcelain and bric-à-brac,
A tall clock ticks above the tiles,
Where Love’s framed profile smiles.

I hear her say, “Ah, had I known!—
I suffer too for what has been—
For what must be.”—A wild ache shone
In her sad gaze that seemed to lean
On something far, unseen.

And as in sleep my own self seems
Outside my suffering self.—I flush
’Twixt facts and undetermined dreams,
And stand, as silent as that hush
Of lilac light and plush.

Smiling, but suffering, I feel,
Beneath that face, so sweet and sad,
In those pale temples, thoughts, like steel,
Pierce burningly.... I had gone mad
Had I once thought her glad.—

Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn
To look beyond the present far,
For one faint future hope, I turn—
There, in her garden, one fierce star,
A cactus, red as war,

Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,
Flames torrid splendor,—brings to life
A sunset; memory of one
Rich eve she said she ’d be my wife;
An eve with beauty rife.

Again amid the heavy hues,
Soft crimson, seal, and satiny gold
Of flowers there, I stood ’mid dews
With her; deep in her garden old,
While sunset’s flame unrolled.

And now!… It can not be! and yet
To see ’tis so!—In heart and brain
To know ’tis so!—While, warm and wet,
I seem to smell those scents again,
Verbena scents and rain.

I turn, in hope she ’ll bid me stay.
Again her cameo beauty mark
Set in that smile.—She turns away.
No farewell! no regret! no spark
Of hope to cheer the dark!

That sepia sketch—conceive it so—
A jaunty head with mouth and eyes
Tragic beneath a rose-chapeau,
Silk-masked, unmasking—it denies
The look we half surmise,

We know is there. ’Tis thus we read
The true beneath the false; perceive
The ache beneath the smile.—Indeed!
Whose soul unmasks?… Not mine!—I grieve,—
Oh God!—but laugh and leave....

Beyond those knotted apple-trees,
That partly hide the old brick barn,
Its tattered arms and tattered knees
A scarecrow tosses to the breeze
Among the shocks of corn.

My heart is gray as is the day,
In which the rain-wind drearily
Makes all the rusty branches sway,
And in the hollows, by each way,
The dead leaves rustle wearily.

And soon we ’ll hear the far wild-geese
Honk in frost-bitten heavens under
Arcturus; when my walks must cease,
And by the fireside’s log-heaped peace
I ’ll sit and nod and ponder.—

When every fall of this loud creek
Is silent with the frost; and tented
Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak
And shaggy with the snows, that streak
The hillsides, hollow-dented;

I ’ll sit and dream of that glad morn
We met by banks with elder snowing;
That dusk we strolled through flower and thorn,
By tasseled meads of cane and corn,
To where the stream was flowing.

Again I ’ll oar our boat among
The dripping lilies of the river,
To reach her hat, the grape-vine long
Struck in the stream; we ’ll row to song;
And then … I ’ll wake and shiver.

Why is it that my mind reverts
To that sweet past? while full of parting
The present is: so full of hurts
And heartache, that what it asserts
Adds only to the smarting.

How often shall I sit and think
Of that sweet past! through lowered lashes
What-might-have-been trace link by link;
Then watch it gradually sink
And crumble into ashes.

Outside I ’ll hear the sad wind weep
Like some lone spirit, grieved, forsaken;
Then, shuddering, to bed will creep,
To lie awake, or, haply, sleep
A sleep by visions shaken.

By visions of the past, that draw
The present in a hue that’s wanting;
A scarecrow thing of sticks and straw,—
Like that just now I, passing, saw,—
Its empty tatters flaunting.

The sun a splintered splendor was
In trees, whose waving branches blurred
Its disc, that day we went together,
’Mid wild-bee hum and whirring buzz
Of locusts, through the fields that purred
With summer in the perfect weather.

So sweet it was to look, and lean
To her young face and feel the light
Of eyes that met my own unsaddened!
Her laugh that left lips more serene;
Her speech that blossomed like the white
Life-everlasting there and gladdened.

Maturing summer, you were fraught
With more of beauty then than now
Parades the pageant of September:
Where What-is-now contrasts in thought
With What-was-once, that bloom and bough
Can only help me to remember.

Through ironweeds and roses
And scraggy beech and oak,
Old porches it discloses
Above the weeds and roses
The drizzling raindrops soak.

Neglected walks a-tangle
With dodder-strangled grass;
And every mildewed angle
Heaped with dead leaves that spangle
The paths that round it pass.

The creatures there that bury
Or hide within its rooms
And spidered closets—very
Dim with old webs—will hurry
Out when the evening glooms.

Owls roost on beam and basement;
Bats haunt its hearth and porch;
And, by each ruined casement,
Flits, in the moon’s enlacement,
The wisp, like some wild torch.