There is a way Of healing love with love, They say. But I say no! What! Shall pain comfort pain, Fever cool fever, Woe minister to woe? Shall tear remembering, Wash cool remembering tear? Shall scar play host to scar, Loneliness shelter loneliness, And is forgetting here? Poor patch-work of the heart, This healing love with love, Binding the wound to wound, The smart to smart! Grafting the dream upon the other dream, As gardener grafts tree to tree, And both from the same wild root Bearing their bitter fruit; The new dream dreaming in the old, The old dream in the new. . . . And neither dreaming true! Beloved! Is there a heaven Above the heaven we knew -- So well -- Is there beneath our dream's awakening A darker hell? And shall we know them too? One thing I know! Of a vast giving that is a taking, A wrong, a robbery! Perhaps you so wronged me, I so robbed you. Therapy! I am content to feel This health of heart that will not heal; I am content to think That I am one with hunger, Given to thirst, And that I need not eat nor drink. I am full-nourished so. * * * * Beyond the wastes of wept-out woe I see you still, Holding toward me those tender hands I could not fill; My palms still curve and close, Deeming they hoard The shining things you poured That I let spill. Over us lift the years; Hill upon hill Of days that wither into night And nights that ache to day . . . Reiterated emptiness of shade and light Crowding the emptier way. Up to this high, sure therapy of time, Beloved, shall we climb? I know that I am tired: I would rather stay Down in the shadows of our dear defeat -- Too still for invading grief, too deep -- A little while; And sleep, as children sleep. A little, little while! Turn from my dreamlessness, and wake, and smile Indifferent to the dark, Holding to me my one-time joy, As children clutch an ancient, battered toy They will not have renewed; Smile -- and lie closer to a loss That tunes itself to gain -- Inexorable lullaby -- Lie softer, safer, Pillowed on pulseless fortitude, Drowsy . . . . Beneath my pain. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INFANT JOY, FR. SONGS OF INNOCENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE EPITAPH: FOR A LADY I KNOW by COUNTEE CULLEN THE SOUND OF THE SEA; SONNET by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE VIRGIN'S SLUMBER SONG by JOSEPH FRANCIS CARLIN MACDONNELL THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET by SAMUEL WOODWORTH ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 3. TO THE CUCKOO by MARK AKENSIDE |