Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DARK MEMORY by JOHN HALL WHEELOCK

First Line: IT WAS OUR LOVE'S GETHSEMANE, AND YOU WEPT
Last Line: SHED FOR MY SAKE, AND HOW YOU WEPT ALONE.
Subject(s): FAREWELL; SOLITUDE; TEARS; PARTING; LONELINESS;
It was our love's Gethsemane, and you wept.
Around us, in the drab twilight, the little room
That had known our love, that had known our tears and our laughter, kept
Shamed silence. Silently 'round us rose the gloom --

And in the street the first few lamps were gleaming; day's
Last fire on garish windows glared. The light
Feebled. Over the huddled city's wastes and ways
Gravely and pitifully came the night.

Darkness -- and from far off a whistle mourned. The sands
Of time drew downward, but still no word was said,
No word -- only your poor hands lying in my hands
So hopeless, against my shoulder your poor head.

You were so tired, you were so hushed, so fain,
Poor love, all blind with weeping; pinched and small
Your face shone in the glimmer -- but I, who felt no pain
Save pity, I was so eager to end it all.

And I could not endure it; suddenly my heart grew old --
In the gray evening, in the drab twilight -- while, one by one,
Your hot tears ached along my hands. O stern and cold
I sat beside you, in that last hour, and you wept alone.
* * * *
Such was the stage, appointed -- with darkness 'round about --
For our youth's drama; pitiful and bare
The scene, no crowds applauded, no sorrowing strings cried out,
But the eternal tragedy was there.
* * * *
Brief was our parting, very brief, and without a word.
With a mute kiss we parted -- you turned, and I,
Closing the door, in the outer hall-way heard,
Already as if from far away, your sudden cry.

That cry -- what silences followed! What silences haunt the space
Of the years grown wide between us. On barren rhyme
I have wreaked my youth; I have followed a phantom loveliness -- your face
Fades in the hungry darkness of Time.

But now, in my nights, now, in my loneliness I know
The bitter passion that moved those tears, and why,
When my life went home to you -- when the tides groped -- you shuddered so,
And the agony of that love, the dolor of that cry.

Had you foreseen, O wise and sad, the unkinder ways
My feet must wander on strange roads? Did you foresee,
Beyond that wilful hour, the desolate nights and days --
And the tears that I pitied so, were they shed for me?

O fatuous dream, that like a sword clove us apart!
Dear room, where once your sorrowing lips on mine
Trembled, where humbly for my proud and ignorant heart
You broke the bread and poured the living wine!

Love, I have heard it told, is God, and once Love found me --
Across my heart his very heart was bowed --
He came to me out of the darkness, his arms were laid around me:
But I was stubborn, I was foolish, and very proud.

Often, often now, in the silence of the after years,
In the night I remember your weeping. O my own,
In the darkness I have remembered them, your sacred tears
Shed for my sake, and how you wept alone.



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