Hap
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
. . .
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
. . .
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet . . .
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker? . . .
The wind cooled as it crossed the open pond
and drove little waves toward us,
brisk, purposeful waves
. . .
He lived—childhood summers
thru bare feet
then years of money’s lack . . .
If you undo your do you would
be strange. Hair has been on my mind.
I used to lean in the doorway . . .
He thinks when we die we’ll go to China.
Think of it—a Chinese heaven
where, except for his blond hair, . . .
Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood. . . .
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives . . .
Near Ekuvukeni,
in Natal, South Africa,
a woman carries water on her head. . . .