Not rightly there and yet not gone away

And standing among strangers we could say

This word of ours as in the common tongue

And mean by it: we know where we belong.

THE THIRD SONNET

Already thinking we were of a mind

I used—and it was almost without knowing—

The words whose meaning was what we were doing

The commonest such words, the vulgarest kind.

All over again it shocked you through as though

Till now you had not seen what thing we did.

In many weeks of you with me in bed

Of words like that I scarcely taught you two.

But with such words I summon up the shock

Afresh of my first fleshly knowing you.

It can’t be hidden any longer now

Of all your favors you kept not one back.

How could you make yourself common as muck?

The word for what it was you did was

EIGHTH SONNET

At night, by the hedge they hung the washing on . . .

By the stream in the wood, you were standing, wilderness . . .

In the small wooden bed, under the bronze likeness . . .

On a Swedish bed in the workroom just begun

Drying . . . On the hillside, at a steep angle . . .

Behind the cupboard by the window in the writing room . . .

At the inn, the oil stove stank . . . In that same

Storage corner of the writing room, postprandial . . .

Excited by pianos in the monastery . . .

Furnished; you threw the key down from the balcony . . .

In that hotel—in one room, in both rooms . . .

In the Motherland of the Proletariat . . . All times

Of day, all times of night . . . Occasions

In at least four countries and in all four seasons.

BUYING ORANGES

In a yellow fog along Southampton Street

Suddenly a barrow, a slattern plucking at

Her paper bags, and fruit in lamplight.

I stopped struck dumb like one who has seen what

He was running after: there put in his way.

Oranges! No thing else could it ever be!

I blew some warmth into my hands and quickly

Fished in my pockets after cash, to pay

But then between the pence being in my grip

And glancing at the price there written up

In smudged charcoal on newspaper

I caught my own wry whistling undertone

For at that moment bitterly this came clear:

Of course you are not anywhere in this town.

WHEN WE HAD BEEN APART . . .

When we had been apart longer than ever before

Fearfully I searched your letters through for such

Words unknown to me as would say you were

No longer the one I know so well and miss so much.

And yet it must be that, seeing one another again

At once we’d recognize how in need we are

THE TWELFTH SONNET

On Dante’s poems to Beatrice