Louise Bogan

We have struck the regions wherein we are keel or reef.
The wind breaks over us,
And against high sharp angles almost splits into words,
And these are of fear or grief.

Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.
When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements,
The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,
Birds scattered and settled over

Up from the bronze,
I
Water without a
Rush to its rest in air,

Now that I
How passion warms
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,—I'll lie here and

Come, let us tell the weeds in
How we are poor, who once had riches,
And lie out in the sparse and
Pastures that the cows have trodden,

She has no need to fear the fall
Of harvest from the laddered reach
Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing
From the steep beach.

All night the cocks crew, under a moon like day,
And I, in the cage of sleep, on a stranger's breast,
Shed tears, like a task not to be put away—-In the false light, false grief in my happy bed,
A labor of tears, set against joy's…

Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind,
Straight sides, carven knees,
Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm Or remonstrances.
Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine In a pattern of angles.

Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their
To eat dusty bread.

Since you would claim the sources of my
Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed,
The reedy traps which other hands have
To close upon it.

Now that I have your face by heart,
I
Less at its features than its darkening
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,

I burned my life, that I might findA passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek

To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,— Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again

The dark is thrown Back from the brightness, like hair Cast over a shoulder.
I am alone,
Four years older;
Like the chairs and the walls Which I once watched brighten With you beside me.

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved, — a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

She has attained the permanence
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.
Untended stalks blow over her
Even and swift, like young men running.

I do not know where either of us can turn Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall…

O God, in the dream the terrible horse
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.

In fear of the rich mouthI kissed the thin,—Even that was a
To snare me in.
Even she, so
The frail, the scentless

I’ve come to give you fruit from out my orchard,
Of wide report.
I have trees there that bear me many apples.
Of every sort:

At midnight
Run in your ears.

When beauty breaks and falls asunderI feel no grief for it, but wonder.
When love, like a frail shell, lies broken,
I keep no chip of it for token.
I never had a man for

It is yourself you
In a long rage,
Scanning through light and
Mirrors, the page,

Men loved wholly beyond
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry
Rising within women's