Month: March 2021

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing  through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,
I know—for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor—
How may boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.
Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by  a disk in splendour shown;
When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My heart is what it was before
A house where people come and go,
But it is winter with your love:
The sashes are beset with snow.
I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
I blow the coals to blaze again,
But it is winter with your love:
The frost is thick upon the pane.
I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs.
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house.
I water them and turn them south,
And snap the dead brown from the stem,
But it is winter with your love:
I only tend and water them.
There was a time I stood and watched
The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray;
I loved the beggar that I fed,
I cared for what he had to say,
I stood and watched him out of sight;
Today I reach around the door
And set the bowl upon the step.
My heart is what it was before,
But it is winter with your love:
I scatter crumbs upon the sill,
And close the window—and the birds
May take or leave them, as they will.