back.

Nevertheless the curse against you is still in my
   heart
Like a deep, deep burn.
The curse against all mothers.
All mothers who fortify themselves in motherhood,
   devastating the vision.
They are accursed, and the curse is not taken off
It burns within me like a deep, old burn,
And oh, I wish it was better.

BEUERBERG

ON THE BALCONY

IN front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost
   ribbon of rainbow;
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below in the green wheat, the labourers
Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.

You are near to me, and your naked feet in their
   sandals,
And through the scent of the balcony's naked
   timber
I distinguish the scent of your hair: so now the
   limber
Lightning falls from heaven.

Adown the pale-green glacier river floats
A dark boat through the gloom—and whither?
The thunder roars. But still we have each other!
The naked lightnings in the heavens dither
And disappear—what have we but each other?
The boat has gone.

ICKING

FROHNLEICHNAM

You have come your way, I have come my way; You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all; I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.

But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding
We have come our ways and met at last
Here in this upper room.

Here the balcony
Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons
   slowly
Go by with their loads of green and silver birch-
   trees
For the feast of Corpus Christi.

Here from the balcony
We look over the growing wheat, where the jade-
   green river
Goes between the pine-woods,
Over and beyond to where the many mountains
Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the
   morning.

I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through
   me, like the first
Breeze of the morning through a narrow white
   birch.
You glow at last like the mountain tops when they
   catch
Day and make magic in heaven.

At last I can throw away world without end, and
   meet you
Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white;
At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you
Glistening with all the moment and all your
   beauty.

Shameless and callous I love you;
Out of indifference I love you;
Out of mockery we dance together,
Out of the sunshine into the shadow,
Passing across the shadow into the sunlight,
Out of sunlight to shadow.

As we dance
Your eyes take all of me in as a communication;
As we dance
I see you, ah, in full!
Only to dance together in triumph of being together
Two white ones, sharp, vindicated,
Shining and touching,
Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.

IN THE DARK

A BLOTCH of pallor stirs beneath the high
Square picture-dusk, the window of dark sky.

A sound subdued in the darkness: tears!
As if a bird in difficulty up the valley steers.

"Why have you gone to the window? Why don't
   you sleep?
How you have wakened me! But why, why do
   you weep?"

"I am afraid of you, I am afraid, afraid! There is something in you destroys me—!"

"You have dreamed and are not awake, come here to me." "No, I have wakened. It is you, you are cruel to me!"

"My dear!"—"Yes, yes, you are cruel to me. You
   cast
A shadow over my breasts that will kill me at last."

"Come!"—"No, I'm a thing of life. I give
You armfuls of sunshine, and you won't let me live."

"Nay, I'm too sleepy!"—"Ah, you are horrible; You stand before me like ghosts, like a darkness upright."

"I!"—"How can you treat me so, and love me?
My feet have no hold, you take the sky from above me."

"My dear, the night is soft and eternal, no doubt
You love it!"—"It is dark, it kills me, I am put out."

"My dear, when you cross the street in the sun-
   shine, surely
Your own small night goes with you. Why treat
   it so poorly?"

"No, no, I dance in the sun, I'm a thing of life—" "Even then it is dark behind you. Turn round, my wife."

"No, how cruel you are, you people the sunshine With shadows!"—"With yours I people the sunshine, yours and mine—"

"In the darkness we all are gone, we are gone
   with the trees
And the restless river;—we are lost and gone
   with all these."

"But I am myself, I have nothing to do with these." "Come back to bed, let us sleep on our mys- teries.

"Come to me here, and lay your body by mine,
And I will be all the shadow, you the shine.

"Come, you are cold, the night has frightened you.
Hark at the river! It pants as it hurries through

"The pine-woods. How I love them so, in their mystery of not-to-be." "—But let me be myself, not a river or a tree."

"Kiss me! How cold you are!—Your little breasts Are bubbles of ice. Kiss me!—You know how it rests

"One to be quenched, to be given up, to be gone
   in the dark;
To be blown out, to let night dowse the spark.

"But never mind, my love. Nothing matters,
   save sleep;
Save you, and me, and sleep; all the rest will
   keep."

MUTILATION

A THICK mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat.
I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up.
Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.

I hold the night in horror;
I dare not turn round.

To-night I have left her alone.
They would have it I have left her for ever.

Oh my God, how it aches
Where she is cut off from me!

Perhaps she will go back to England.
Perhaps she will go back,
Perhaps we are parted for ever.

If I go on walking through the whole breadth of
     Germany
I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.

Over there is Russia—Austria, Switzerland, France, in a circle! I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.

It aches in me.
What is England or France, far off,
But a name she might take?
I don't mind this continent stretching, the sea far
     away;
It aches in me for her
Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching;
Not even longing,
It is only agony.

A cripple!
Oh God, to be mutilated!
To be a cripple!

And if I never see her again?

I think, if they told me so
I could convulse the heavens with my horror.
I think I could alter the frame of things in my
     agony.
I think I could break the System with my heart.
I