The Edelweiss
Love, I will take your pain
Into my heart,
Uncover, tear apart
The new-healed flesh, and make it bleed again.
And I will say it is
Redeeming blood,
Bid the wound-edges bud
Into a flower of the precipice,
An edelweiss
Blown between world and world,
Its petals splashed and pearled
With drops of passionate blood, with tears of ice:
Since red and white,
Stillness and heartbeat, ice
And torturer’s flame, desire and sacrifice
Bloom on that cliff-ledge, balanced, composite.
It may be so,
For often what I sigh
Between your lips as our last minutes fly
Is truer than I know.
But what stays firm
Though minutes fly, though heart
Sigh truth? What faith, what chiselled vow, what art
Outwit the worm?
One stone of trust,
One obelisk will stay.
Each captive night, each wry defenceless day
I love you as I must.
My stair to heaven, my rope
That blinds me to the stair;
My pastime and my prayer,
Sentence of death, certificate of hope;
Each paradox shall raise
Music for searching hand
And heart that dare withstand
Its cliff-ledge counterpoise, its petalled blaze.
Blossom and faith and vow
And hope are brought to bed
Not there, my love, not after we are dead,
But here and now.
Therefore, to read the sky’s
Forehead and fathom love
I may not look above
My pattern here, your hands, your lips, your eyes.
Page(s) 129-130
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