Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COMPANIONS, by VIRGINIA TAYLOR MCCORMICK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COMPANIONS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Youth had gone from them, taking love
Last Line: Her ultimate return.
Subject(s): Friendship


Youth had gone from them, taking love,
To leave a crabbed loneliness;
Companionship that makes of life a duelling ground,
The victory never quite to either side.
He leaned upon a cane, ebon and gold,
Was cross or bantering by turns,
Fretful, spoiled child, too bold,
Or ungrown man a little overdisciplined by life.
A twinge of pain would make his face a gargoyle,
Leering at her solicitous and kindly,
Waiting his need of woman,
Gentle yet strong, to follow blindly.

Their mutual attitude
Deceived us many summers
And we saw the old, eternal,
Wedded mummers,
A little weary each of each.
Frail and fine as a rare Oriental vase
She had a bloom upon her like the peach, --
Maybe an ancient apple-tree's last flowers --
Breathing of adolescence still
And sweet with orchard freshness.

I found her once deep in the laurel wood,
Lonely and bowed.
At my first word of greeting tears
Dripped from her wise grey eyes,
The story tumbled from her lips
Without apologies.

"We never married, dear;
We quarrelled and he did not come again.
It was my dearest friend
Who soothed his pain
But failed him finally,
Incapable of love's real sacrifice.
For him I am an echo of the past,
The touch of feminine fingers,
Almost his mother now,
When he is bent by agony,
No longer shamed before me for his cowardice
And knowing that it will be over soon.
We are too old for gossip to have weight,
And we have found each other late,
Too late for ribald tongues to sting.
He has drunk life with all its dregs.
He could not feed upon me in his heart,
Together or apart,
As I on him.
Men of his type miss the realities.
We never are life's wine and bread
To them as they to us.
Good women, the quiet homely ones,
Get them when passion fails.

We miss the ecstasy of knowledge when it beckons:
Our goodness is itself the bar between.

The pain is bad today; it makes him hate himself
And me a little too, remembering.
Hug tight within your breast the joy of love;
Press close, so close, the secret hidden there;
Love is a precious gift, not the world's plaything.
Youth is all sweet and wild;
Yet for a woman age is well if she
Be needed by a man who is a child."

Softly she touched me;
Lingeringly
Her delicate hand lay like a flower
Upon my cheek. Gentle she was,
Yet as an ivory tower
For strength, I knew that she might break
But never bend, as she went eagerly
Where the maples burn,
To find him waiting, sure only of one thing,
Her ultimate return.





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