Intime

by D. H. Lawrence

　　

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RETURNING, I find her just the same,At just the same old delicate game.Still she says: "Nay, loose no flameTo lick me up and do me harm!Be all yourself!—for oh, the charmOf your heart of fire in which I look!Oh, better there than in any bookGlow and enact the dramas and dreamsI love for ever!—there it seemsYou are lovelier than life itself, till desireComes licking through the bars of your lipsAnd over my face the stray fire slips,Leaving a burn and an ugly smartThat will have the oil of illusion. Oh, heartOf fire and beauty, loose no moreYour reptile flames of lust; ah, storeYour passion in the basket of your soul,Be all yourself, one bonny, burning coalThat stays with steady joy of its own fire.But do not seek to take me by desire.Oh, do not seek to thrust on me your fire!For in the firing all my porcelainOf flesh does crackle and shiver and break in pain,My ivory and marble black with stain,My veil of sensitive mystery rent in twain,My altars sullied, I, bereft, remainA priestess execrable, taken in vain—" So the refrainSings itself over, and so the gameRe-starts itself wherein I am keptLike a glowing brazier faintly blue of flameSo that the delicate love-adeptCan warm her hands and invite her soul,Sprinkling incense and salt of wordsAnd kisses pale, and sipping the tollOf incense-smoke that rises like birds.Yet I've forgotten in playing this game,Things I have known that shall have no name;Forgetting the place from which I cameI watch her ward away the flame,Yet warm herself at the fire—then blameMe that I flicker in the basket;Me that I glow not with contentTo have my substance so subtly spent;Me that I interrupt her game.I ought to be proud that she should ask itOf me to be her fire-opal—. It is wellSince I am here for so short a spellNot to interrupt her?—Why should IBreak in by making any reply!

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