The Meddler

"You will forgive me Sweetheart?
I love you...
You are my intensified dream of ages
Quiet and calm browed...

You will forgive me?
The sadness that I cause,
The aching pain of unfulfilled desire,
The happiness that may not be ours.
The long nights of desolation.
The graying days of loneliness...
You will forgive them?

A fighter I!
Uncouth and huge in the softness of your life
Out of place...
My mind forever perplexed with vague visions
Of a flaunting, flaming death
In some far colorful land.
You were content before I came
Content with your life
And your flat voiced, quietly egotistical lover.
You would have gone to him quietly
No desire or passion -- only -- quietly satisfied
You would have had an apartment
Like thousands of other fools.
You would have borne quiet children
And after a fashion ... you would have been content.
Then I came ... a Chimera of pain
Deep in my eyes
The smile of a child
And the mouth of a lover.
Unkempt, huge and rather whistful --
Strange tales and bright ribbons
Bringing romance into your drab life.
I would not shatter the soft platitude of your life
By my passionate desire
yet I love you!
You will forgive me?

The Saturnine Seaman.

University of Chicago - The Daily Maroon
Jan 16, 1929

For The Saturnine Seaman

You ask me to forgive you.
Is it not enough to say -- 'I love you'?
You have come down to me from Olympus
With your bold egoism and charming smile,--
Quickening and intoxicating me
Demanding all!

You have come -- a tousel-headed swain
From the North Seas
Wild and erratic;
But your eyes have the wistfulness
Of calm grey waters.
And your caresses -- singularly tender for one
So stalwart -- envelope me in all the rapture
Of disenthralled passion.

Because I am slow in giving
And have not known the ways
Of gods and seaman
You must depart
But come or go--
I love you.

Mary