Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A QUESTION, by MAX EASTMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A QUESTION, by                    
First Line: Dark voiced and deeply passioned
Last Line: To float with you in your still breast forever.
Subject(s): Desire


Dark-voiced and deeply passioned as the dim
Vermilion-lighted mysteries of faith and music
In cathedrals old and holy;

Dusk-eyed and velvet-throated as the slim
Young warm Madonna-Magdalens of saints
In painted windows rich with melancholy;

Dear friend and distant stranger: when the sum
Of all our light, our wisdom, is gone out,
And night has dimmed the candle of her vesper,

Do you not sometimes simply rise and come,
Feeling along the ray of my desire
With silent hands and barefoot steps that whisper?

I see the dusky circles of your eyes
Like burnt hot torches in your moon-pale flesh,
Your lips like warm wounds painted on its pallor,

Your quickened vivid breasts that fall and rise
Only too tenderly to pierce the veil
That clings on them, but cannot hide their color;

It cannot hide the flowing of your limbs,
The pure bold flame of motion that you are --
Earth's vestal unto earth's divine communion.

Is it a lonely phantom that but swims
Up from the depth of my own long desire?
Has not my dream in yours a dream-companion?

Your speech is motion -- mine is poetry.
You will not answer what I dare to ask;
You will flow silent as a sacred river.

And I who watch you in sad ecstasy,
Have said my question as a saint his prayer,
To float with you in your still breast forever.





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