The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 18. ...his hot and eager hand...

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Eight John Reed Poems

Our Lady of Pain

Brown waffles and mellow molasses

Welsh rarebit that bites us and burns

Budweiser that fills up our glasses

The waiter that turns and returns

When these have gone by with their glories

What then to our stomachs remain?

Thou! Mystic and savage Dolores

Our Lady of Pain!

We physic and doctor and dope us

Thou art smoking and tempting and hot

What matter if pains telescope us

We eat thee, dyspepsia or not

Nor health nor hygiene Is the question

So fill up the bumpers again

Thou wilt come when we have Indigestion

Our Lady of Pain!

—John Reed[i]

1908

A Winter Run

Out of the warmth and the light,

Into the frosty weather,

Into the teeth of a winter’s night ,

Running, we sprang together.

The icy, silent dark leapt up

And struck me in the face –

And the moon hung out her silver cup

As trophy for the race.

Our driving breath flung out behind

Like some dim, flying plume;

Our shadows, on the snow outlined,

Ran with us in the gloom.

The long white road, the rhythmic beat,

The wind – sword in our hair –

On, here’s the spell of winged feet,

The charm of winter air!

A flashing glimpse, a scarce-seen face,

A figure clear, then gone,

Once more the dark, the swinging pace,

And on again, and on.

Across the river dim and still

The heedless sleepers lie,

And, finger-like, the towered hill

Stands up against the sky.

Into the warmth and the light.

Out of the frosty weather,

Out of the chill of a winter‘s night,

Glowing, we Sprang together.

—John Reed[ii]

1909

Dear Heart

Dear Heart, pale stars through the quiet night

Swing with a languorous music across the deep

And bring a wonderful peace to the hearts of men.

And you, so wan, from your fearful fight,

Throb still with the pain of your thinking. The angel Sleep

Wings softly, bearing you back to the skies again.

I see you smile in the silver light,

Sleeping, a child again, whispering tremulous words

To nameless souls in the child – world beyond our ken.

—John Reed[iii]

1909

And Yet—

Here do we part, you and the rest to stay

In the red valley where the lotus weaves

Glad pain with sleep; and up the rugged way.

I go alone, and wish I might forget.

And yet – and yet –

The sun is on the upland sheaves,

And all the grass with starry tears is wet.

Work! Work! Something to dull the ache

Of petty friends and little souls – ah, vain,

All vain the grief that you and you awake.

Gone is the old unutterable thrill,

And still – and still –

I hear from our the driving wraiths of rain

The brown thrush singing on the upland hill.

—John Reed[iv]

1909

Wanderlust

By the trackless shore of the sea, where the alien

shouting of breakers

Beats on a desolate land, and is lost in the swirl

or the dunes –

The unsatisfied souls of the sea-dead wander the

flowerless acres,

Tracing In shadowless sand their mystic Ineffable

runes,

For the sea calls to go forth to the sea and the

world’s far ending,

And the gull’s cry carries the sound of gongs from

the temples of Ind,

And the phantoms of wanderers suffer from lust and

desire unending,

Luring with scent of strange flowers caught In the

hair of the wind,

O call of our Mother and Bride, fierce Earth that

entices with danger,

Whose kiss is a Pain and a Torture, whose passion

is ultimate Death!

I follow thee Eastward alone, with a love that is

wilder and stranger

Than that of the dead who have mingled their breath

with the flame of thy breath.

The wrath of the sea is thy robe, and thy breasts are

the measureless mountains,

And the fire of thy spirit burns hot in the sullen

red heart of the East;

Thy whisper is fraught with the laughter of birds and

the murmur of fountains,

And the vagabond sons of men throng glad to the joy

of thy feast.

—John Reed[v]

1910

The Wanderer to His Heart’s Desire

There you – here I;

Not all the sweetness of your face,

Nor joy of your fair company,

Can bring us to one place.

I think of you –

A picture framed in sombre trees,

Eyes where a gleam of sky breaks through,

Gray days on Summer seas.

The Western Wind,

That runs the prairie like a flame,

Bears in his fragrant garments twined

A whisper of your name.

In some far land,

When I desire your comradeship

And the cool frankness of your hand,

The sweetness of your lip.

Then do you send

A blown kiss in the wind’s long hair;

And though I sleep at the world’s end

Yet will it find me there.

—John Reed[vi]

1911

A Song for May

It seems I have not breathed till now,

Nor felt such deep and still delight;

The wind’s a cool hand on my brow,

And I am robed in night –

In high and lordly night.

I want not gold nor silken grace,

Nor to be straw to men’s desire;

I’d clasp again my mother’s face

Before the evening fire –

The warm, transfiguring fire.

I want not love – alas, I hear

A spurred horse racing on the sand –

Ah, woe is me! I fear, I fear,

My lover’s burning hand –

His hot and eager hand!

—John Reed[vii]

1913

Love at Sea

Wind smothers the snarling of the great ships,

And the serene gulls are stronger than turbines;

Mile upon mile the hiss of a stumbling wave breaks unbroken –

Yet stronger is the power of your lips for my lips.

This cool green liquid death shall toss us living

Higher than high heaven and deeper than sighs –

But O the abrupt, stiff, sloping, resistless foam

Shall not forbid our taking and our giving!

Life wrenched from its roots – what wretchedness!

What waving of lost tentacles like blind sea-things!

Even the still ooze beneath is quick and profound –

I am less and more than I was, you are more and less.

I cried upon God last night, and God was not where I cried;

He was slipping and balancing on the thoughtless shifting planes of sea.

Careless and cruel, he will unchain the appalling sea-gray engines –

But the speech of your body to my body will not be denied!

—John Reed[viii]

1916