Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTER AND ANSWER, by JOHN FREEMAN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LETTER AND ANSWER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: After so many years she wrote, but why
Last Line: "restore the life that once joined me to you?"
Subject(s): Letters; Love - Loss Of; Love Letters; Man-woman Relationships; Past; Youth; Male-female Relations


I

AFTER so many years she wrote, but why
He could not think. Whether because one day
Time struck so loudly, and she saw the gray
Of age, stretching on to infinity;
Or in mere idleness of mockery—
"But no, it could not be in idle play
She turned the turf and plunging through the clay
Stared at love's skeleton with cold bright eye."
Why then? Maybe she could not tell—a fret
To feel once more a prick that then was pain,
Making a present pleasure of the past.
Had she but felt as I felt and feel yet,
He murmured, she would never write again;
But in her thought last love is never the last.

II

"I looked long at your letter before I read:
It was the same swift, eager, heedless hand.
I knew the phrases I should find, the planned
Meeting where once we met and where we said
Good-bye so often. I could see your head
Smiling down as you wrote in half command,
Half pleading, thinking I could never withstand
Reminders of old innocency now fled.—
Just so. There are reminders of a year
Long past, and vows that were not meant to break,
And of my lips' old hunger for your lips.
And I can read it now without a stir,
Pulse steady as a toad sunk in a lake,
Nor the least quiver in my finger-tips.

III

"When love is young it is so lightly slain.
This was not like a hoar and name-scored bark
Bearing a tragic roof of shadows dark,
And shaking with old malady and pain.
This was a love not to be born again,
Innocent, simple, and now laid cold and stark,
Forgot where never public eye shall mark,
Nor your caress and smile revive again.
I dreamed that it would grow to a noble tree
For birds to whistle in and magnify
The wind and sun and near stars wheeling by;
Now fungus'd over, fallen where it grew,
It lies. How can mere words of 'me' and 'you'
Restore the life that once joined me to you?"





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