In The Cage

    The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar
    Of morning over the water growing blue.
    At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour
    A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.

    But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green
    Leave the recesses of the room
    With misty auras drawn around their gloom
    Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen.

    You, standing between the window and the bed
    Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie
    Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye
    Musing upon the contour of your head,
    Watching you comb your hair,
    Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk,
    Tied with white braid above your slender hips
    Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare
    And delicate legs by contrast white as milk.
    And as you toss your head to comb its tresses
    They flash upon me like long strips of sand
    Between a moonlit sea, pale as your hand,
    And a red sun that on a high dune stresses
    Its sanguine heat.

        And then at times your lips,
    Protruding half unconscious half in scorn
    Engage my eyes while looking through the morn
    At the clear oval of your brow brought full
    Over the sovereign largeness of your eyes;
    Or at your breasts that shake not as you pull
    The comb through stubborn tangles, only rise
    Scarcely perceptible with breath or signs,
    Firm unmaternal like a young Bacchante's,
    Or at your nose profoundly dipped like Dante's
    Over your chin that softly melts away.

    Now you seem fully under my heart's sway.
    I have slipped through the magic of your mesh
    Freed once again and strengthened by your flesh,
    You seem a weak thing for a strong man's play.
    Yet I know now that we shall scarce have parted
    When I shall think of you half heavy hearted.
    I know our partings. You will faintly smile
    And look at me with eyes that have no guile,
    Or have too much, and pass into the sphere
    Where you keep independent life meanwhile.
    How do you live without me, is the fear?
    You do not lean upon me, ask my love, or wonder
    Of other loves I may have hidden under
    These casual renewals of our love.
    And if I loved you I should lie in flame,
    Ari, go about re-murmuring your name,
    And these are things a man should be above.

    And as I lie here on the imminent brink
    Of soul's surrender into your soul's power,
    And in the white light of the morning hour
    I see what life would be if we should link
    Our lives together in a marriage pact:
    For we would walk along a boundless tract
    Of perfect hell; but your disloyalty
    Would be of spirit, for I have not won
    Mastered and bound your spirit unto me.
    And if you had a lover in the way
    I have you it would not by half betray
    My love as does your vague and chainless thought,
    Which wanders, soars or vanishes, returns,
    Changes, astonishes, or chills or burns,
    Is unresisting, plastic, freely wrought
    Under my hands yet to no unison
    Of my life and of yours. Upon this brink
    I watch you now and think
    Of all that has been preached or sung or spoken
    Of woman's tragedy in woman's fall;
    And all the pictures of a woman broken
    By man's superior strength.

    And there you stand
    Your heart and life as firmly in command
    Of your resolve as mine is, knowing all
    Of man, the master, and his power to harm,
    His rulership of spheres material,
    Bread, customs, rules of fair repute -
    What are they all against your slender arm?
    Which long since plucked the fruit
    Of good and evil, and of life at last
    And now of Life. For dancing you have cast
    Veil after veil of ideals or pretense
    With which men clothe the being feminine
    To satisfy their lordship or their sense
    Of ownership and hide the things of sin,
    You have thrown them aside veil after veil;
    And there you stand unarmored, weirdly frail,
    Yet strong as nature, making comical
    The poems and the tales of woman's fall....
    You nod your head, you smile, I feel the air
    Made by the closing door. I lie and stare
    At the closed door. One, two, your tuftèd steps
    Die on the velvet of the outer hall.
    You have escaped. And I would not pursue.
    Though we are but caged creatures, I and you,
    A male and female tiger in a zoo.
    For I shall wait you. Life himself will track
    Your wanderings and bring you back,
    And shut you up again with me and cage
    Our love and hatred and our silent rage.