Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, YOUNG WIFE, WAKING, by FLOYD DELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

YOUNG WIFE, WAKING, by                    
First Line: Shadow-boy, shadow lover
Last Line: Come not again!
Subject(s): Desire; Dreams; Nightmares


Shadow-boy, shadow lover,
Why do you come
To enchant me, to haunt me,
To trouble me in dreams?

The remembered delirium
Of your dream-kiss
Seems more real now than this
That I wake to take in the light of day
From him who lay by my side all night.

Are you the ghost of some old desire,
Lawless and lost—some dead caprice—
That you conspire against my peace?
Would you remind me
Of some rash vow left behind me?
Must you perturb me now?
What's over is over,
O phantom-lover!

Or are you the warning in my breast
Of some new passion dawning unconfessed?
Some wild longing that I dare not know by day,
That I must hide away in a secret dream at night,
Shuttered utterly from sight—
Lest I seem to be wronging one too dear so to
wrong—
One to whom my dreams belong!
Do you hear?

How does one exorcise
A boy-ghost with laughing eyes?
Anathema maranatha! Paz tecurn! Amen!
Shadow lover,
Shadow-boy,
Come not again!




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