Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BELOVED STRANGER, SELECTIONS, by WITTER BYNNER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BELOVED STRANGER, SELECTIONS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I will not call you beautiful again
Last Line: Nor leaves, nor orioles, nor you.
Alternate Author Name(s): Morgan, Emanuel
Subject(s): Love; Strangers


I

LAUREL

I will not call you beautiful again
Though my throat ache with the silence of refraining;
And not a sigh will I explain
Though my hands fill with explaining. . . .

For you are as beautiful as a hill I know
In spring, breathing with light --
But as soon as I told you, a chill like snow
Covered and turned you white.

I will not call you beautiful again,
Your labyrinthine loveliness I will not name;
I will be silent as forgotten men
Dead beyond blame.

No matter how your airs of spring beguile,
Be it my fortitude, my business, my endeavor,
Not to acclaim the laurel of your smile --
Except today, tomorrow and forever!

II

COINS

I am a miser of memories of you
And will not spend them.
When they were anticipations
I spent them
And bought you with them,
But now I have exchanged you for memories,
And I will only pour them from one hand into the other
And back again,
Listening to their
Clink,
Till someone comes
Worth using them
To buy . . .
Then I will change them again into anticipations.

AN END

As though it mattered,
As though anything mattered, --
Even laughter!

For in the end there shall be no one to tell
Whether it was laughter
Or weeping.

III

AUTUMN

Last year, and other years,
When autumn was a vision of old friendships,
Of friends gone many ways,
I stood alone upon a dais of coppered fern,
I breathed my height of isolation,
Encircled by a remembering countryside.
I touched dead fingers in a larch;
I sailed on long blue waves of land
Flowing transfixed the whole horizon round;
I wore old imperial robes
Of aster, sumac, golden rod;
I flaunted my banners of maple;
And, when the sun went down,
I lay full length
Upon a scarlet death-bed.

So kingly a thing was autumn,
Other years,
But here you stand beside me on this hill,
And shake your head and smile your smile
And twist these things lightly between your fingers
As a pinch of dust
And bare your throat
And show me only spring,
Spring, spring,
Fluttering like your slender side,
Cascading like your hair.

IV

DREAM

I had left dreaming,
Till there came the look of you
And I could not tell after that,
And the sound of you
And I could not tell,
And at last the touch of you
And I could tell then less than ever --
Though I shook and fell
Though I open the door and stare out
When the dream of your voice draws near,
O my stranger!
As at the very mountain-brink
Of dream.

For how could the motion of a shadow in a field
Be a person?
Or the flash of an oriole-wing
Be a smile?
Or the turn of a leaf on a stream
Be a hand?
Or a bright breath of sun
Be lips?

I can put out my hand and nothing is there. . . .
None of these things are true,
All of them are dreams;
There are neither streams
Nor leaves, nor orioles, nor you.





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