Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Marriage-capriceMarion Strobel
L
It is not fitting
That in this too casual life
I, who called you wife
So many weeks ago,
Should stretch past glory
Into present woe.
You are not more to me—
Leaning now against the lintel of my door
And quavering your stagy, “Nevermore to live with you”—
You are not more to me
Than a familiarity of face
And figure.
You ask if I remember
That Sunday in December—
Why treat finality
Elaborately?—
Weaving an intricate fatuity of sighs and words
About a simple ending,
Pretending that we
Achieve tragedy!
That I am unaware of every beauty that there is
In you:
“We can be friends?”—oh, God!—you touch my hand
In the accustomed way,
In the accustomed way it ends:
You do not go,
We are not friends.
And so it ends.