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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Witter Bynner

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Passages from a Poem: The New World

Witter Bynner

I
CELIA was laughing. Hopefully I said:

“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.

Again, when Celia laughed, I doubted her and said:

“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?”

She looked along the lake. And when I heard her speak,

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.”

The sunlight fell in glory on her hair;

And then said Celia, laughing, when I held her near:

“They who take comfort there, shall find it here.”

So when the sun stood sharp that day

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.”

II
“A stranger might be God,” the Hindus cry.

But Celia says, importunate:

“The stranger must be God, and you and I.”

III
Once in a smoking-car I saw a scene

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.

Across the car were two young men,

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.

The other face was younger, clean and sad.

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.

After a peaceful moment there

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!”

But as often as that mind would fill

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 seeing gleam, the blinded stare,

The cry:

“Non, tu n’es pas mon frère!”

I saw myself, myself, as blind

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!”

IV
I know a fellow in a steel-mill who, intent

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.

“David,” I said, “under the temporary ache

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.

“We have each other more, much more,”

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!”

It was not madness. David’s eye

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.

V
Celia, perhaps the few

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!