T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
From The Tunnel
By Evelyn Scott (18931963)(From Precipitations, 1920) I HAVE made you a child in the womb,I | |
Holding you in sweet and final darkness. | |
All day as I walk out | |
I carry you about. | |
I guard you close in secret where | 5 |
Cold eyed people cannot stare. | |
I am melted in the warm dear fire, | |
Lover and mother in the same desire. | |
Yet I am afraid of your eyes | |
And their possible surprise. | 10 |
Would you be angry if I let you know | |
That I carried you so? | |
II I could kiss you to death | |
Hoping that, your protest obliterated, | |
You would be | 15 |
Utterly me. | |
Yet I know—how well!— | |
Like a shell, | |
Hollow and echoing, | |
Death would be, | 20 |
With a roar of the past | |
Like the roar of the sea. | |
And what is lifeless I cannot kill! | |
So you would make death work your will. | |
III In most intimate touch we meet, | 25 |
Lip to lip, | |
Breast to breast, | |
Sweet. | |
Suddenly we draw apart | |
And start. | 30 |
Like strangers surprised at a road’s turning | |
We see, | |
I, the naked you; | |
You, the naked me. | |
There was something of neither of us | 35 |
That covered the hours, | |
And we have only touched each other’s bodies | |
Through veils of flowers. | |
But let us smile kindly, | |
Like those already dead, | 40 |
On the warm flesh | |
And the marriage bed. | |