Mark Strand, 1968
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Coleridge M
We never said farewell
We never said farewell, nor even looked
Our last upon each other, for no sign
Was made when we the linkèd chain unhooked
And broke the level line.
And here we dwell together, side by side,
Our places fixed for life upon the chart.
Two islands that the roaring seas divide
Are not more far apart.
Mary Coleridge, 1896
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Drayton
Since there's no help, come let us
kiss and part
Since there's no help, come let us kiss
and part—
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes:
—Now if thou would'st, when all have
given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
Michael Drayton, 1619
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Millay
Oh, Oh, you will be sorry for
that word!
Oh, Oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth
and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Coleridge M
Unpunished
The weapon that you fought with was a word,
And with that word you stabbed me to
the heart.
Not once but twice you did it, yet the sword
Made no blood start.
They have not tried you for your life. You go
Strong in such innocence as men will boast.
They have not buried me! They do not know
Life from its ghost.
Mary Coleridge, 1890
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Wickham
Divorce
A voice from the dark is calling me.
In the close house I nurse a fire.
Out in the dark, cold winds rush free
To the rock heights of my desire.
I smother in the house in the valley below,
Let me out to the night, let me go, let me go.
Spirits that ride the sweeping blast,
Frozen in rigid tenderness,
Wait! For I leave the fire at last
My little-love's warm loneliness.
I smother in the house in the valley below,
Let me out in the night, let me go, let me go.
High on the hills are beating drums.
Clear from a line of marching men
To the rock's edge the hero comes.
He calls me and he calls again.
On the hill there is fighting, victory or
quick death,
In the house is the fire, which I fan with
sick breath.
I smother in the house in the valley below,
Let me out in the dark, let me go, let me go!
Anna Wickham, 1911
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Merrill
A Renewal
Having used every subterfuge
To shake you, lies, fatigue, or even that of passion,
Now I see no way but a clean break.
I add that I am willing to bear the guilt.
You nod assent. Autumn turns windy, huge,
A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.
We sit, watching. When I next speak
Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.
James Merrill, 1958
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Sandburg
Mag
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came
along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and
a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to
a minister
And told him we would love each other
and take care of each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain
lasts anywhere.
Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away
from here
And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand
miles away dead broke.
I wish the kids had never come
And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
And a grocery man calling for cash,
Every day cash for beans and prunes.
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish to God the kids had never come.
Carl Sandburg, 1916
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Akhmatova
Ah, You Thought
Ah—you thought I'd be the type
You could forget,
And that praying and sobbing, I'd throw myself
Under the hooves of a bay.
Or I would beg from the witches
Some kind of root in charmed water
And send you a terrible gift—
My intimate, scented handkerchief.
Damned if I will. Neither by glance nor by groan
Will I touch your cursed soul,
But I vow to you by the garden of angels,
By the miraculous icon I vow
And by the fiery passion of our nights—
I will never return to you.
Anna Akhmatova, 1921
translated by Judith Hemschemeyer
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Snodgrass
Mementos, I
Sorting out letters and piles of my old
Canceled checks, old clippings, and
yellow note cards
That meant something once, I happened to find
Your picture. That picture. I stopped there cold,
Like a man raking piles of dead leaves in his yard
Who has turned up a severed hand.
Still, that first second, I was glad: you stand
Just as you stood—shy, delicate, slender,
In that long gown of green lace netting
and daisies
That you wore to our first dance. The sight of you
stunned
Us all. Well, our needs were different, then,
And our ideals came easy.
Then through the war and those two long years
Overseas, the Japanese dead in their shacks
Among dishes, dolls, and lost shoes; I carried
This glimpse of you, there, to choke down
my fear,
Prove it had been, that it might come back.
That was before we got married.
—Before we drained out one another's force
With lies, self-denial, unspoken regret
And the sick eyes that blam
e; before the divorce
And the treachery. Say it: before we met. Still,
I put back your picture. Someday, in due course,
I will find that it's still there.
W. D. Snodgrass, 1967
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Bontemps
Idolatry
You have been good to me, I give you this:
The arms of lovers empty as our own,
Marble lips sustaining one long kiss
And the hard sound of hammers breaking stone.
For I will build a chapel in the place
Where our love died and I will journey there
To make a sign and kneel before your face
And set an old bell tolling on the air.
Arna Bontemps, 1949