FAIRE-PART
The death she dared not seek
Came to her otherwise:
She died in Holy-week
– Who closed her lovely eyes?
What friends, less fond than I,
Followed her as she passed
Alone – to live and die?
– I failed her first and last!
Outnumbered by the ways
Through which her death might come
“Peaceful” the wire says –
But where was Dolly’s home?
Though we lie far apart
Who knocks so at my side?
And breaks into my heart
– Risen on Easter-tide?
Instead of being carried away by the death-drama, to fight against its physical reality even while it seizes by the throat and breaks into the heart; to be able to accept this bitterest test, or beat in vain against the impenetrable wall. Was this the “constructive love” she had promised me? Is it in me to make her promise come true?
Though London burns and falls,
Her new-year message sent
“Constructive love”: brave calls
Falsely convalescent?
As in that menaced town
Her soul she wildly spent
On ills that weighted it down
Yet forth, not back, it went!
To have, less than to haunt?
What pass-word let her through?
I dread to know, yet want
To know each pang she knew!
Her smile; so sadly real
– As those whom dreams forsake –
Grows immaterial,
Lost every time I wake.
This coming Spring appals
Each vital mourning sense:
Flowers like waterfalls
But quicken the suspense;
Wisteria waves from walls
Faint-handed, a farewell…
Its gesture’s droop recalls
The hands we loved so well!
As her doomed shoulders bent
On ways of greater fear,
Her voice reviberant
Still echoes in my ear:
Living through me it tries
Contagious sobs to rest;
To solve grief’s mysteries
Surely to die were best?
Source: Oscaria: In Memory of Dorothy Ierne Wilde. Ed. Natalie Clifford Barney. Privately printed, 1951.