from Two on an Old Pathway
by Eleanor O’Rourke Koenig
(Hartford: Edwin Valentine Mitchell, 1929)
CONQUEST
She had a way
Of sweeping up a room
Then for a minute
Hanging on the broom.
Plumb in the middle—
There she would stand
Holding a broom
And the world in her hand.
REFLECTION
Waving tree and a sunset sky—
And which of beautiful things am I?
A leaf that is staying fastidious green
Or a leaf green-gold, where the sun may preen
On his last, long light, or the breeze’s power
To move a tree in the sunset hour,
Or the sun on a tree, or a bird I hear
In his shaking nest without a fear
For his wild-joy song he sings so high,
The crown of it all—and which am I,
A leaf, the breeze, the bird, the sun?
I am all, I am every one—
I am the neighboring house wall,
Holding reflection—the shade of it all!
DAISY WHITE
I stood a while in deference
To what that turn of road revealed;
A lifetime picture of surprise,
A sheer, white slope—a daisy field!
So sudden, beautiful and still,
I saw it just before the night—
Of course I would not enter there
Or lift one stem of daisy white.
And down below, across the road,
Reflected in the pond’s smooth glass,
So sharp, so shadowy, so rare,
I saw the mind’s own image pass!
EVER SO FAIR
Ever so fair, oh, springtime, come again
Oh, world, oh life, oh let this idyll be
That you will bring again one spring for me,
My childhood’s spring, as pleased, as rare as then—
Stand back oh mind, oh, heart, you women, men,
Hold back the page you forced my eyes to see,
Oh, let me stand again half-naked, free,
Fall, laughing torrent, heal me, April rain.
On woodland walks, on paths where blue flowers grow,
Oh let me stand and hear a bird’s voice call,
Oh, let me touch brown earth, a garden stem
On paths I loved, so long, so long ago,
And say only of winter and of fall
For tears I wept, I wish the spring for them.
THERE WAS A VISION….
There was a vision that was ever mine,
In strangeling places it has bloomed most fair
And even when I forsook it, it was there,
Chill rumors rose when it began to shine.
Mad-glorious, still, I marked some trembling line,
I often ran; I would not dare to tarry.
With sparks I left, with trails I could not carry,
Strange ghosts will rise to make dark nooks divine.
Some lilt of song would spring from a rainbow fountain,
Would trouble me, some word, so sheer, alone,
“Hyacinth,” clearly, for a Chaldean stone.
Mock faces looked, but I was on a mountain
Or in May fields where only white flowers grow
Or past the summer, gathering flowers of snow….
WINDOW VIEW
This room for me is isolate and still,
Near humdrum seems a thousand miles away,
This window looking out across the day
Marks trees as uncombed hair upon a hill;
A sky so neutral, cloudless as to spill
Meek pathos on the walk that leads a way
Across a field—where ruts reclaim today
What sameness had engendered in a will?
So do I ever shape a scene to mind . . .
What phantom footsteps flock upon the air,
That path ascends the hill, or anywhere,
Do I recall the dream of steps that wind,
One figure now upon the summit there,
To match my mood eternally inclined?
AFTER AN OLD IRISH METER
What is the answer, mountain, this dark night for her;
Dark, deep, bitterly chill the tale this night has to tell;
This silencing, covering, burying sheet, her heart’s own well,
Is frozen now and will not stir.
A terrible, terrible grief is this, it seems;
The core of all beautiful things, I think, is frozen now.
If it should break, mountain, you tremble, knowing how
You would be overthrown by streams.
Yet you must pity her and ponder on this thing,
Dark, brooding, lonely, of you she was, which made the night
Of all that is locked in now—beautiful, piercing, bright,
That frozen bird that came to sing.
DECREE
This is the thing that you have done to me,
Rankled injustice meetly in my mind,
And long ago I should have turned to flee,
But now, the fixture of your fate, I find
My mind enchanted, conquered of my will,
With careful eyes constrained to follow out
Your set gyrations moving in and out
The course you have laid out meticulously.
Why do you hold me—when I think to speak
My mind to you, still something holds me back
And often I would turn and run away
But stand stock-rooted—this is what I seek
And fear, and know, I, too, must bear the rack
When you will stand and face the truth some day.
THE ROAD
So soon, so soon she would not disbelieve
Engendered dreams, uplifting him a god
As she had done before he placed the ring
Upon her finger, making her his wife,
“Wife,” she had breathed, and therewith had become
The homily of what his wife must be
Singing amidst the roughest household task
With tired, slim fingers. . .
When she saw him scan
Her littleness beside a spreading form
It did not cause a heart throb, for by then
Perforce she had appraised him. . . .
It had come,
This truth she did not dare look in the eyes,
So shortly after he had brought her home—
His temper rising like an angry gust
Then sinking to a wheedling attitude.
At first, in terror she had almost swooned,
Then came a headlong sorrow for his fault,
Maternal sorrow, as for a spoiled child. . . .
Too soon, too soon, the wheedling air wore off
Then came the wifely void she could not fill
Which seemed a trivial thing beside the fear
Which had begun to grow, an ominous cloud
Through which she looked at life with startled eyes,
Viewing the havoc that his anger made
With others, cattle, men, even with her. . . .
One day she clasped a tree and prayed to God
Then started down the road—and then ran back
Chained by that counter-fear. She tried again
But seemed to see him looking from somewhere—
Again she tried . . . again. . . .
Twelve months a wife,
One night she watched him count his growing hoard
Counted against her body. Strangely wise,
She watched the soiled dollars, saw his face
Narrowly eager, saw his scheming eyes,
His cruel mouth, his shoulders stooped with greed,
Saw him so plainly, with the veil removed,
The shimmering veil her girlish dreams had woven,
Saw him a miser . . . silent and afraid,
She crouched before the stove . . . then he stood up.
Not given much to talk, he talked that night,
Told her about a fire that had burned down
Ed Higgins’ shack, and money, too,, had burned,
Guess, after all, a bank was the safe place
For money earned so hard. Then press his clothes,
His Sunday clothes tomorrow—and on time!—
To town, her query, even as a thought,
A plan, too quickly mounted to her brain—
Yes, to town, tomorrow—and alone!
That night as he lay snoring on the bed
She sat so still and told a tremulous star
The things she could not speak. The moonlight showed
A gleaming, rippling, golden thing—the Road!
Once it had been her mother in the night
And once a velvet carpet strewn with roses…
Then, as she looked, a cloud obscured the moon
And, fearfully, she crept down by his side.
Fate looked and laughed and gave a humorous twist
To this strange tragedy. Next day she rose
Alert, to mind his needs with aptitude,
Outside she aired his clothes upon the line,
Her skirts carousing in the April gale,
And all the world seemed free as April wind.
One magic moment she could run with it!
Inside she heated up the heavy iron,
Hasty for time, for time was on her then.
At ten—and sharp—he would come from the field…
Outside the world seemed free as April wind. . . .
She brought the dampened clothes and pressed the seams,
Yet strangely watched the wind that ran away,
“Come out,” it cried, “come out away with me,
“Come out,” it cried—
The room was black with smoke—
She looked and saw the ruin of burning clothes,
Haphazardly the iron sat on the coat,
And dug a grave, a soft, warm, mussy grave,
On the left side, where a man’s heart should be—
His Sunday clothes—she saw the dollars there—
Come out, come out,”—
She screamed, then laughed, in fear,
Then heard the ticking clock upon the wall—
With some slow haste she lifted up the iron
And placed it on the stove, and held aloft
The coat and saw the hole burned, burned in deep,
On the left side, where a man’s heart should be.
Her rough old sweater hung against the wall,
She grabbed it, half unknowing it was there,
Because of time—then, darting through the door,
She fled, she fled and joined the April wind
Which even then took on a lighter tone,
Although such things she could not heed or know,
For helter-skelter down the road she ran….
The road, the road, the light and running road,
The road….
She ran a mile, or ten, or more,
Free, free, with wild, strange laughter on her lips,
Free, free at last—fear had outwitted fear!
These words she mumbled over and over again,
Fear had outwitted fear….
She stood quite still
Against a tree and in a moment there
She lived again that year, how he had come,
A knight, to fill her lonely girlish dreams.
How she had gone to live a country life,
To be his wife, to live with him, and love….
The wind had died away to tell this tale
To some far hill or sea…she watched the sand
That made the road and could have scooped it up
In great, soft handfuls, could have knelt down there
And kissed the road, a mad, rapt, holy thing….
A man came riding in a honking car,
Looked past a slender girl against a tree,
She searched his weathered face and simple eyes.
“Going to town,” she shouted bravely then.
“Why, yes, jump in,” he said, and gave her room.
They moved along . . . by woods, by fresh warm fields—
“Any work in town for girls, or do you know,”
She asked him, shyly. “Work enough,” he said,
“Girls won’t stay long, they’re always marrying,”
He laughed across his wrinkled face in glee.
She looked ahead, and laughed—and laughed again.
He did not know her laughter was a prayer.
THE LISTENER
Who is that knocking at my lonely door,
Who is that knocking again,
So long I have waited, so long before,
And no one came knocking then.
Waited alone for a voice never heard,
Listened for feet to come by.
Now I must stand here, framing a word,
Speech seems so strange and so shy.
Still I must hasten for my amber comb,
For my necklace and fine-set ring—
It may be a beggar, too tired to roam
But it may be at last the King!
THE SHADOW
They’re out at last, the words not said,
I’ve lied and lied, with silence, too,
In January I came to dread
Your narrow look—this grew and grew,
This lovely thing. I often reached
With careful hand and felt the air
And, feeling nothing, almost screeched,
For he was surely sitting there!
And even when you chopped away
The chair where he would come and sit—
Two chairs block up a room, you’d say,
And one night made quick work of it—
He still was there. No neighbors came,
You saw to that, no one passed by.
I almost could not speak my name.
You broke the looking-glass—don’t lie!
I hid the little piece behind
The farthest board out in the shed—
Think there’s something I can’t find?
Why, yes, there is, the shadow said.
So that is how it came about,
I only had to think that way.
You’ll never know what we shut out
When you went into town that day.
She’s safe, locked in, you thought, but we,
We almost danced the rafters down.
Why, he is all that you might be—
You’ll search and search the farthest town?
Find shadows under apple trees,
Go search forever, look behind
The other locks, the other keys—
Yes, there is something you can’ t find!
SHARPER SPRING
How do I know
Some spring you may
Forgetful seem—
You may not miss me so
Even to say
It was a dream.
And I may sleep then
So still and wan
Under the ground,
With never my heart again
To free springs gone
With its sound.
WINTER AFTERNOON
No wind against the paler sky
To rise again and then abate.
No change in this monotony
That even weather may create.
Not even may a dream thought stir
To thwart this certainty of hush,
My eyes not even think despair
Depicted in a garden bush.
But rest where topmost branches are
More fine, more still, on stillest trees,
Identically against the sky—
I wait, as orderly as these.
[END OF SELECTION]