Elsa Gidlow

“ Uncover the glimmering, shy limbs.
I break wild roses, scatter them over her.
The thorns between us sting like love's pain.
Her flesh, bitter and salt to my tongue,
I taste with endless kisses and taste again. ”

“ Love has betrayed us enough with its
treacherous wonder:
Let us go now while we ache with the magic
Or what is the gain?
Art is our one immortality,
All we may win from the gods
In exchange for our labor and pain. ”

“ Bitter, terrible tears;
But the joys have warm mouths, and madness
Dances downwards with the years.
Come to me at the top of the world,
O Mine. The valley is deep,
The valley is full of the dying,
And with those that sleep. ”

“ Have you not heard my laughter?
It leads the winds:
They come tumbling and bubbling after.
I have learned to laugh.
I have learned to laugh with my spirit
And with my soul.
Listen. Do you not hear it?
I shall quench the world. ”

“ Even my peace of heart, born of long pain,
Dies, drowned in a turbulence of passion.
Life today is like a glass reflecting
Nothing more than my own grieving eyes,
Or like a goblet that I sit and stare at,
Empty of all but stains of last night's wine. ”

“ Below narrow roads men have made,
Below bridging lies men have built,
Into the caverns of truth.
I know pain is waiting there
Eager to break me,
But I am strong.
I have faith in my youth.
Living is crusted with lies. ”

“ The Hole in My Curtain
It is because of the hole in my curtain.
I have stared through the torn space
Into Life's tortured face
As she leaned low and treadled her loom,
Watching, watching for the inevitable doom. ”

“ Where the ragged ends of life come unfurled.
My love cuts downward between mountains
Like a torrential cataract, to the deeps,
For love, like life, is a down-going.
But my soul is like a thing that sleeps. ”

“ For the peopled, placid valley.
I must be in a bare place
And lonely as a moon
To find the graceless ways of people
Worthful as a flower's ways,
A flower that lives for loveliness
And dies when beauty dies. ”

“ We are given pain to balance every joy,
We tragic-eyed divinities in dust.
Many the hearts life bleeds with little wounds,
The souls bewildered between God and lust.
We know the way of pity and pity's pain ”

“ I saw that your tumbled hair was bright
with flame,
That your eyes were sapphire souls with
hungry stars in them,
And your lips were too near not to be kissed.
Life crouches at the knees of Chance
And takes what falls to her. ”

“ But never let the charm be broken.
Let it stay a mystery
For all time to be.
Yesterday, with lighter joys,
We wantoned at the outer portal.
Now, with love's old alchemy,
We have made ourselves immortal. ”

“ Time is a rhymeless poem
Without any end
Written in space,
Here at the world's summit
Where life-giving winds
Sharply whip one's face.
Life is the one reality,
Life intensely realized,
Life wildly felt ”

“ Shoots transparent light into a moving mist
That twists spirally
Like a butterfly at play.
In the heart of the mist, morning opens, a
gold flower,
Superbly, like a dawning passion.
Can night be the consummation
Of this expectant white hour? ”

“ And men walked as trees; and dreams went mute.
'T is no small thing, to lose a dear, sure world,
To stumble, desolate, through hideous space,
Down unfamiliar and unfriendly roads
That bruise your feet. ”

“ My wild, white dove,
My tempest-driven dove that I gave house,
You cannot be my Love.
She died. I used to hold her all night long;
Come awake
At dawn beside her. Try to ease with loving
A thirst too deep to slake. ”

“ Swept my spirit clear of its cobwebs,
Gathered them up and thrust
Them from me. And then
Men passing, found the whole,
Called them songs and sang them and exulted.
They thought they had found my soul. ”

“ Life laid a flaming finger on my heart,
Gave me an electric golden thread,
Pointed to a pile of beads and said:
Link me one more perfect than the rest.
Love 's the thread, my sister, you a bead,
An ivory one, you are so delicate. ”

“ Her way is best for one so wistful-tired.
My three-months' lover, go with your
world-sick heart,
Your love-bruised flesh. I am no sanctuary.
This hot mouth, these ardent, out-reaching arms,
This hollow between my breasts, these
hungry limbs,
They are a cradle, a cradle of living flame ”

“ We shape the only deathless soul
That mortal man will ever know.
Behold his gratitude, these stones.
They say 't is by the heart we grow.
Still we build quietly and wait.
The heart may break; the heart is frail ”

“ Breasts like mounded snow,
Too small for children's mouths;
Lips a red spring bud
My love will bring to bloom.
How restlessly she moves!
She, no more than a child,
Stirs like a woman troubled
With guilt of secret sins. ”

“ Nor shrink from the cruelty of its awful kiss.
I shall never have any fear of love.
Never shall I dread love's strength
Nor any pain it might give.
Through all the years I may live
I shall never have any fear of love. ”

“ I am only very tired and would like to
rest awhile
With my head here
And play with the long strands of your
loosed hair,
Or touch your skin,
Feel your cool breath on my eyes,
watch it stir
Those rising hills where your breasts begin ”

“ Poppy red,
Blood-like, red,
Pale throat wound with a poppy scarf
Gleaming out of the crowd.
Background of grey,
A rain-wet street;
Shuffling, shambling
Beating feet,
Past the corner where four ways meet. ”

“ Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it's best that I set no foot. ”