Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Passages from a Poem: The New WorldWitter Bynner
“How shall this beauty that we share,
This love, remain aware
Beyond our happy breathing of the air?
How shall it be fulfilled and perfected?
If you were dead,
How then should I be comforted?”
But Celia knew instead:
“He who takes comfort here, shall find it there.”
A halo gathered round her hair.
I looked and saw her wisdom bare
The living bosom of the countless dead …
And there
I laid my head.
“Life must be led
In many ways more difficult to see
Than this immediate way
For you and me.
We stand together on our lake’s edge, and the mystery
Of love has made us one, as day is made of night and night of day.
Conscious of one identity
Within each other, we can say,
‘I love you, all that you are.’
We are uplifted till we touch a star.
We know that overhead
Is nothing more austere, more starry, or more deep to understand
Than is our union, human hand in hand …
But over our lake come strangers … a crowded launch, a lonely sailing boy.
A mile away a train bends by. In every car
Strangers are travelling, each with particular
And unkind preference like ours, with privacy
Of understanding, with especial joy
Like ours. Celia, Celia, why should there be
Distrust between ourselves and them, disunity?
How careful we have been
To trim this little circle that we tread,
To set a bar
To strangers and forbid them! Are they not as we,
Our very likeness and our nearest kin?
How can we shut them out and let stars in?”
The sun fell on the boy’s white sail and on her cheek.
“I touch them all through you,” she said. “I cannot know them now
Deeply and truly as my very own, except through you,
Except through one or two
Interpreters.
But not a moment stirs
Here between us, binding and interweaving us,
That does not bind these others to our care.”
And then said Celia, laughing, when I held her near:
“They who take comfort there, shall find it here.”
Behind the shadowy firs,
This poem came to me to say,
My word and hers.
“Record it all,” said Celia, “more than merely this,
More than the shine of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss,
More than our rapt agreement and delight
Watching the mountain mingle with the night …
Tell that the love of two incurs
The love of multitudes, makes way
And welcome for them, as a solitary star
Brings on the great array.
Go make a calendar,”
She said, “immortalize this day.”
But Celia says, importunate:
“The stranger must be God, and you and I.”
That made my blood stand still.
The sun was smouldering in a great ravine,
And I, with elbow on the window-sill,
Was watching the dim ember of the west,
When hushed and low, but poignant as a bell
For fire, there came a moan: the voice of one in hell.
French by their look, and brothers,
Unhappy men who had been happy boys,
And one was moaning on the other’s breast.
His face was hid away. I could not tell
What words he said, half English and half French. I only knew
Both men were suffering, not one but two.
And then that face came into view,
Gaunt and unshaved, with shadows and wild eyes,
A face of madness and of desolation. And his cries,
For all his mate could do,
Rang out, a shrill unearthly noise,
And tears ran down the stubble of his cheek.
With the manful, stricken beauty of a lad
Who had intended always to be glad.
The touch of his compassion, like a mother’s,
Guarded the madman, soothed him and caressed.
And then I heard him speak:
“Mon frère, mon frère!
Calme-toi! Right here’s your place.”
And, opening his coat, he pressed
Upon his heart the poor wet face
And smoothed the tangled hair.
The maniac screamed, struck out and fell
Across his brother’s arm. Love could not quell
His fury. Wrists together high in air
He rose, and with a yell
Brought down his handcuffs toward the upturned face …
Then paused, then knelt—and then that sound, that moan,
Of one forsaken and alone:
“Seigneur!—le créateur du ciel et de la terre!—
Forgotten me, forgotten me!”
And then the voice grew weak,
The brother leaned to ease the huddled body. But a shriek
Repulsed him: “Non! Détache-moi! I don’t care
For you. Non! Tu es l’homme qui m’a trahi!
Non! Tu n’es pas mon frère!”
With the great anguish and the rush of hate,
The boy, his young eyes older, older,
Would curve his shoulder
To the other’s pain, and bind
Their hearts again, and say: “Oh, wait!
You’ll know me better by and by.
Mon pauvre petit, be still—
Right here’s your place.”
The cry:
“Non, tu n’es pas mon frère!”
As he. For something smothers
My reason. And I do not know my brothers …
But every day declare:
“Non, tu n’es pas mon frère!”
Upon his labors and his happiness, had meant
In his own wisdom to be blest,
Had made his own unaided way
To schooling, opportunity,
Success. And then he loved and married. And his bride,
After a brief year, died.
I went to him, to see
If I might comfort him. The comfort came to me.
There is unwonted nearness with the dead.”
I felt his two hands take
The sentence from me with a grip
Forged in the mills. He told me that his tears were shed
Before her breath went. After that, instead
Of grief, she came herself. He felt her slip
Into his being like a miracle, her lip
Whispering on his, to slake
His need of her. “And in the night I wake
With wonder and I find my bride
And her embrace there in our bed,
Within my very being!—not outside.
He said, “now than before.
This very moment while I shake
Your hand, my friend,
She welcomes you as well as I,
And laughs with me because I cried
For her…. People would think me crazy if I told.
But something in what you said made me bold
To let you meet my bride!”
Was clear and open-seeing.
His life
Had seen in his young wife,
As mine had seen when Celia died,
The secret of God’s being.
Whom I shall tell of you
Will see with me your beauty who are dead,
Will hear with me your voice and what it said!