hope

hope kills.
hope reunites that spark of resilient beauty in life
breathes invigoration across my heart's fading embers
once content to glow softly
hope stirs up
what little life my spent spirit has left
consumes all I have left to give,
leaving me with a faint glimmer
receding into ash.

Memory

This is a place I've known all too well.

THE PHILOSOPHER

And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell, --
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?

ESVM

Hunger

My Heart, Being Hungry
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

My heart, being hungry, feeds on food
The fat of heart despise.
Beauty where beauty never stood,
And sweet where no sweet lies
I gather to my querulous need,
Having a growing heart to feed.

It may be, when my heart is dull,
Having attained its girth,
I shall not find so beautiful
The meager shapes of earth,
Nor linger in the rain to mark
The smell of tansy through the dark.