Verses

IF life to these, your verses, I could give,
Into their lines my own strong life bequeathing,
So that forever vivid they might live,
Breathe with my breath when I have long ceased breathing,
Speak with my voice, old tenderness repeating,
When I am still; rereading many times,
You would be moved, as though my blood were beating
Warm through the measured pulses of their rhymes.

Sometimes it seems as though you held my heart
Between your slender hands, calmly reflecting;
Observing with cold eyes a thing apart,
Like some wise alchemist at his dissecting;
Exploring scars of ancient laceration,
Impersonally, as you have often used it;
Then starting, as you view with consternation
The thin red trickles where your fingers bruised it.