Inside And Outside

Now twenty-four or maybe

Was the woman's age, and her white brow was sleek;

Lips parted in surprise, the flawless cheek;

The long brown hair coiled sullenly alive;

Her hands, dropt in her lap, could not

At the novel on the table, being weak;

Nor breath, expunger of the mortal

Of nature, its own tenement contrive;

For look you how her body stiffly

Just as she left it, unprepared to stay,

The posture waiting on the sleeping eyes,

While the body's life, deep as a covered well,

Instinctive as the wind, busy as May,

Burns out a secret passageway to hell.

There is not anything to say to

Speechless, who have stood up white to the

All night-till day, harrying the game too close,

Quarries the perils that at midnight

Waiting for those who hope to

With foolish daylight their most anxious fear,

A bloodless and white fear that she may

In the hushed room, and leave them soundless here:

There is no word that death can find to

Deeper than life, savager than their time.

When Gabriel's trumpet ends all life's delay,

Will crash the beams of firmamental woe:

Not nature will sustain the even

Of death, though death sustains all nature, so.