Coming Down to Dinner

A SUDDEN loveliness —
A flutter as of wings —
And I look up.

Wrapt in an intimacy of embrace
Alone achieved among women,
Very slowly coming down the length of the great hall
Toward me, but unconscious of me,
My dear one, and another!
The taller, the elder, protective, mothering,
With an arm thrown round the dreaming form of my love;
And she — my love — relaxed,
At rest in the crook of her arm;
An unspeakable beauty enveloping them both,
As of their own two hearts
Made perceptible in atmosphere
Round them and about them,
Preceding them,
Protecting them.

A sudden throb in my heart
Makes me infinitely desire to go up to them
And cry to them,
‘Oh, what have you been saying to each other?
What have you been saying to each other to-night,
That makes you both so beautiful,
And wise,
And strange,
And inaccessible,
Like stars?'

But I neither move nor speak.

They pass me by;
I feel an intimate peace descending upon me
From the hush of their two spirits —
(Verily, there is holiness in women
We men know nothing of) —
They smile at me —
And with that smile they shut me out from them.

(As they pass
I see my dear one —
Her little fair head
Thrown back upon the bosom of the other;
Her eyes bemused with a happiness
Beyond my ken.)

Sorrowfully, I turn and gaze into the fire,
And spread my hands before it.
I know there are heavens I cannot enter,
Being male —
Whole reaches of the Universe
From which I must ever be excluded;
And I am sad . . .