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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TALKING, by JOHN FREEMAN Poet's Biography
First Line: What I said to him and what he said to / me
Last Line: "laughter—""we'd die of fright."
Subject(s): Talk
First Line: What I said to him and what he said to / me
Last Line: "laughter—""we'd die of fright."
Subject(s): Talk
WHAT I said to him and what he said to me
I cannot now remember; but I remember
How we lay idle above the idle water
And under the hill,
Where the black ruined mill
Rose like a coffin heaved out of the earth
By the affrighted corpse waking within.
The trees wore late September,
There was an idle motion in the water;
Our talk drifted and ended.
There came a heaven of silence when our voices
Had made confusion of our thoughts; and now
Purged of confusion our thoughts sank, ascended,
Parted and met and blended.
And then—who was it said,
"If we but knew the terrors we missed, and all
The terrors that missed us, we'd die of fright?"
I know you laughed as soon as it was spoken
And that brief heaven of silence broken,
And flowed again the idle water under the hill.
But now, parted and silent, my thoughts turn
West, and yours East, to meet
Where in mid-sea the mind's Bermudas burn.
The same thoughts flow
Wave-like around,
And at a sudden sound
I hear your voice or mine ending with light
Laughter—"We'd die of fright."
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