Poetry of the legends part 2
The Basket - Amy Lowell
I
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies
white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness
sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The
air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue,
and beside it stand
two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.
See! She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair.
She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill,
between the geranium stalks. He laughs, and crumples
his paper
as he leans forward to look. "The Basket Filled with
Moonlight",
what a title for a book!
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops.
He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums. He
is beating
his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse. She
sits
on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap. And tap! She
cracks a nut.
And tap! Another. Tap! Tap! Tap! The
shells ricochet upon the roof,
and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear.
"It is very queer," thinks Peter, "the basket was
empty, I'm sure.
How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?"
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple,
and the roof glitters
like ice.
II
Five o'clock. The geraniums are very
gay in their crimson array.
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs
goes Peter
to pay his morning's work with a holiday.
"Annette, it is I. Have you finished? Can
I come?"
Peter jumps through the window.
"Dear, are you alone?"
"Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done. This
gold thread
is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have
seen me bankrupt. Sit down, now tell me, is your story
going well?"
The golden dome glittered in the orange of the
setting sun. On the walls,
at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles,
and coffin palls. All stiff with rich embroidery, and
stitched with
so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds
new-opened on their stems.
Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky.
"No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread
of such a red.
My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison. Heigh-ho! See
my little
pecking dove? I'm in love with my own temple. Only
that halo's wrong.
The colour's too strong, or not strong enough. I don't
know. My eyes
are tired. Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable. I
won't do
any more. I promise. You tyrannise, Dear,
that's enough. Now sit down
and amuse me while I rest."
The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor,
and begin to climb
the opposite wall.
Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting,
and undulant in the orange glow. His senses flow towards
her,
where she lies supine and dreaming. Seeming drowned in
a golden halo.
The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear.
He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid
hands.
His lips are hot and speechless. He woos her, quivering,
and the room
is filled with shadows, for the sun has set. But she
only understands
the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one
colour
on another. She does not see that this is the same, and
querulously murmurs
his name.
"Peter, I don't want it. I am tired."
And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed.
There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky.
III
"Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full
moon. I must be alone."
"How soon the moon is full again! Annette,
let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love,
I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You
write
`No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange,
my Dear,
that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would
marriage
strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied
the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the
whole of me,
you pick my brains to rest
