Interim

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

　　

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The room is full of you!—As I came inAnd closed the door behind me, all at onceA something in the air, intangible,Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyedEach other room's dear personality.The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—Has strangled that habitual breath of homeWhose expiration leaves all houses dead;And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change.Save here. Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gateHad opened at my touch, and I had steppedInto some long-forgot, enchanted, strange,Sweet garden of a thousand years agoAnd suddenly thought, "I have been here before!"You are not here. I know that you are gone,And will not ever enter here again.And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,Your silent step must wake across the hall;If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyesWould kiss me from the door.—So short a timeTo teach my life its transposition toThis difficult and unaccustomed key!—The room is as you left it; your last touch—A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itselfAs saintly—hallows now each simple thing;Hallows and glorifies, and glows betweenThe dust's grey fingers like a shielded light.There is your book, just as you laid it down,Face to the table,—I cannot believeThat you are gone!—Just then it seemed to meYou must be here. I almost laughed to thinkHow like reality the dream had been;Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.That book, outspread, just as you laid it down!Perhaps you thought, "I wonder what comes next,And whether this or this will be the end";So rose, and left it, thinking to return.Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passedOut of the room, rocked silently a whileEre it again was still. When you were goneForever from the room, perhaps that chair,Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while,Silently, to and fro...And here are the last words your fingers wrote,Scrawled in broad characters across a pageIn this brown book I gave you. Here your hand,Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.Here with a looping knot you crossed a "t",And here another like it, just beyondThese two eccentric "e's". You were so small,And wrote so brave a hand!How strange it seemsThat of all words these are the words you chose!And yet a simple choice; you did not knowYou would not write again. If you had known—But then, it does not matter,—and indeedIf you had known there was so little timeYou would have dropped your pen and come to meAnd this page would be empty, and some phraseOther than this would hold my wonder now.Yet, since you could not know, and it befellThat these are the last words your fingers wrote,There is a dignity some might not seeIn this, "I picked the first sweet-pea to-day."To-day! Was there an opening bud beside itYou left until to-morrow?—O my love,The things that withered,—and you came not back!That day you filled this circle of my armsThat now is empty. (O my empty life!)That day—that day you picked the first sweet-pea,—And brought it in to show me! I recallWith terrible distinctness how the smellOf your cool gardens drifted in with you.I know, you held it up for me to seeAnd flushed because I looked not at the flower,But at your face; and when behind my lookYou saw such unmistakable intentYou laughed and brushed your flower against my lips.(You were the fairest thing God ever made,I think.) And then your hands above my heartDrew down its stem into a fastening,And while your head was bent I kissed your hair.I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands!Somehow I cannot seem to see them still.Somehow I cannot seem to see the dustIn your bright hair.) What is the need of HeavenWhen earth can be so sweet?—If only GodHad let us love,—and show the world the way!Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal booksWhen love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is.It seems to me I laid it down somewhere,And yet,—I am not sure. I am not sure,Even, if it was white or pink; for then'Twas much like any other flower to me,Save that it was the first. I did not know,Then, that it was the last. If I had known—But then, it does not matter. Strange how few,After all's said and done, the things that areOf moment.Few indeed! When I can makeOf ten small words a rope to hang the world!"I had you and I have you now no more."There, there it dangles,—where's the little truthThat can for long keep footing under thatWhen its slack syllables tighten to a thought?Here, let me write it down! I wish to seeJust how a thing like that will look on paper!"*I had you and I have you now no more*."O little words, how can you run so straightAcross the page, beneath the weight you bear?How can you fall apart, whom such a themeHas bound together, and hereafter aidIn trivial expression, that have beenSo hideously dignified?—Would GodThat tearing you apart would tear the threadI strung you on! Would God—O God, my mindStretches asunder on this merciless rackOf imagery! O, let me sleep a while!Would I could sleep, and wake to find me backIn that sweet summer afternoon with you.Summer? 'Tis summer still by the calendar!How easily could God, if He so willed,Set back the world a little turn or two!Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again!We were so wholly one I had not thoughtThat we could die apart. I had not thoughtThat I could move,—and you be stiff and still!That I could speak,—and you perforce be dumb!I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woofIn some firm fabric, woven in and out;Your golden filaments in fair designAcross my duller fibre. And to-dayThe shining strip is rent; the exquisiteFine pattern is destroyed; part of your heartAches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilledIn the damp earth with you. I have been tornIn two, and suffer for the rest of me.What is my life to me? And what am ITo life,—a ship whose star has guttered out?A Fear that in the deep night starts awakePerpetually, to find its senses strainedAgainst the taut strings of the quivering air,Awaiting the return of some dread chord?Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor;All else were contrast,—save that contrast's wallIs down, and all opposed things flow togetherInto a vast monotony, where nightAnd day, and frost and thaw, and death and life,Are synonyms. What now—what now to meAre all the jabbering birds and foolish flowersThat clutter up the world? You were my song!Now, let discord scream! You were my flower!Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall notPlant things above your grave—(the common balmOf the conventional woe for its own wound!)Amid sensations rendered negativeBy your elimination stands to-day,Certain, unmixed, the element of grief;I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truthWith travesties of suffering, nor seekTo effigy its incorporeal bulkIn little wry-faced images of woe.I cannot call you back; and I desireNo utterance of my immaterial voice.I cannot even turn my face this wayOr that, and say, "My face is turned to you";I know not where you are, I do not knowIf Heaven hold you or if earth transmute,Body and soul, you into earth again;But this I know:—not for one second's spaceShall I insult my sight with visioningsSuch as the credulous crowd so eager-eyedBeholds, self-conjured, in the empty air.Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears!My sorrow shall be dumb!—What do I say?God! God!—God pity me! Am I gone madThat I should spit upon a rosary?Am I become so shrunken? Would to GodI too might feel that frenzied faith whose touchMakes temporal the most enduring grief;Though it must walk a while, as is its wont,With wild lamenting! Would I too might weepWhere weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreathsFor its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it isThat keeps the world alive. If all at onceFaith were to slacken,—that unconscious faithWhich must, I know, yet be the corner-stoneOf all believing,—birds now flying fearlessAcross would drop in terror to the earth;Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reinsWould tangle in the frantic hands of GodAnd the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!O God, I see it now, and my sick brainStaggers and swoons! How often over meFlashes this breathlessness of sudden sightIn which I see the universe unrolledBefore me like a scroll and read thereonChaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirlDizzily round and round and round and round,Like tops across a table, gathering speedWith every spin, to waver on the edgeOne instant—looking over—and the nextTo shudder and lurch forward out of sight—*****Ah, I am worn out—I am wearied out—It is too much—I am but flesh and blood,And I must sleep. Though you were dead again,I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.

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