free-verse37 lines

Frohnleichnam

You have come your way, I have come my way;

You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all;

I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.

But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding

We have come our ways and met at last

Here in this upper room.

Here the balcony

Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly

Go by with their loads of green and silver birch- trees

For the feast of Corpus Christi.

Here from the balcony

We look over the growing wheat, where the jade- green river

Goes between the pine-woods,

Over and beyond to where the many mountains

Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.

I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first

Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch.

You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch

Day and make magic in heaven.

At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you

Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white;

At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you

Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.

Shameless and callous I love you;

Out of indifference I love you;

Out of mockery we dance together,

Out of the sunshine into the shadow,

Passing across the shadow into the sunlight,

Out of sunlight to shadow.

As we dance

Your eyes take all of me in as a communication;

As we dance

I see you, ah, in full!

Only to dance together in triumph of being together

Two white ones, sharp, vindicated,

Shining and touching,

Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.