.

How can love touch me?
Is it not heat,
Or cold,
Or a lion?

My cowardice covers me
Safely
From everything!

II. THE PILLOW

To know you think of me
Sustains my Spirit
Through the long night.

(My thought of you
Is wine, banishing sleep!)

Your thoughts of me are feathers,
Light nothings,
Drifting, dancing,
Floating,
Blown by a breath of fancy
Away from your sight.

They would choke me,
They would blind me
With the Nothing I am to you
If I dared see them;
But I bind them into a pillow,
And to know that you think of me
Sustains my spirit
Through the night.

III. SOUVENIR

Harlequin, seeing me gay
You loved me,
For fools need mirth,

O solemn Harlequin!

Tall tragedians make me laugh
Joyously, riotously,
Tall, dark villains, and heroes with blonde hair
Make me laugh uproariously...
(I could elope with a tragedian!)

But you with your clowning, Harlequin,
Brought bony truth too near--

Harlequin, I might have loved you
But I could not make you gay!

IV. THE CURTAIN

I do not fear
You, or me, or death,

There now is nothing left to fear
But this,
This curtain of blackness.

Once I feared you,
And all you thought and felt

And all you said and did:
I feared myself,
And all you made me think and feel
And say and do--

Now I no longer fear
Thinking, feeling, saying, doing,

Nor blankness, silence, apathy, torpor--

I do not fear
You, or me, or death--

I only fear
This curtain of blackness
Which is your absence.

V. THE DREAM

Harlequin comes to me, smiling,
Through the white-shining birch trees
Of the twilight wood.

He has forgiven
My cowardice and hesitations,
Soon I shall sink into his arms
With all the imagined fervour...
Of a thousand dreams.

Why does he come so slowly?
There is no longer anything
To mar our meeting...

This must be real
For Harlequin is still clowning,
He waves his arms grotesquely
To make me smile....

Quick, into his arms
With unspent fervour.
Why are the trees all sighing?
Look, whispering birches, if you will,
I and my love embrace!

They do not look,
They do not seem to care...

Embrace me, my beloved!
(Can these by passionate kisses?
They feel so thin and cool
Like mist.)

The birches shiver
As though the night-wind stirred them.