The First Year [All Souls' Day] by Edith Wharton

i. Here in my darkness / I lie in the depths of things, / As in a black wood whereof flowers and boughs are the roots, / And the moist-branching tendrils and ligaments, / Woven or spiralled or spreading, the roof of my head, / Blossomless, birdless, starless, skied with black earth, / A ponderous heaven.

But they forget, / Too often forget, and too soon, who above us / Brush the dead leaves from our mounds, / Scrape the moss from our names, / And feel safe, / They forget that one day in the year our earth becomes ether, / And the roots binding us loosen / As Peter's chains dropped for the Angel, / In that old story they read there; / Forget-do they seek to remember? - / That one day in the year we are with them, / Rejoin them, hear them, behold them, and walk the old ways with them- / One!

To-morrow. / And already I feel / The harsh arms of ivy-coils loosening / Like a dead man's embrace, / I feel the cool worms from my hair / Rain like dew, / And the soft-muzzled moles boring deeper, / Down after the old dead that stir not, / Or just grumble: "Don't wake me," and turn / The nether side of their skulls to their head-slab. / While I. I their one-year neighbour, / Thrusting up like a willow in spring, / From my hair / Untwine the thick grass-hair carefully, / Unbind the cool roots from my lids, / Straining up, straining up with thin hands, / Scattering the earth like a cloud, / And stopping my ears from the cry, / Lower down, / Persistent, like a sick child's wail, / The cry of the girl just below me: / "Don't go, don't go. " the poor coward!

ii. How light the air is! / I'm dizzy. my feet fly up. / And this mad confusion of things topsy-turvey, / With the friendly comprehensible roots all hidden, / In this queer world where one can't see how things happen, / But only what they become. / Was it always so queer and inexplicable? / Yes, but the fresh smell of things. / Are these apples in the wet grass, I wonder? / Sweet, sweet, sweet, the smell of the living! / And the far-off sky, and the stars, / And the quiet spaces between, / So that one can float and fly. / Why used we only to walk?

This is the gate-and the latch still unmended! / Yet how often I told him. Ah, the scent of my box-border! / And a late clove-pink still unfrozen. / It's what they call a "mild November". / I knew that, below there, by the way the roots kept pushing, / But I'd forgotten how tender it was on the earth. / So quickly the dead forget! / And the living? I think, after all, they remember, / With everything about them so unchanged, / And no leaden loam on their eyes. / Yes, surely, I know _he_ remembers; / Whenever he touches the broken latch, / He thinks: "How often she asked me, / And how careless I was not to mend it! " / And smiles and sighs; then recalls / How we planted the box-border together, / Knee to knee in the wet, one November. / And the clove-pinks- / Here is the window. / They've put the green lamp on the table, / Where his books lie, heaped as of old- / Ah, thank God for the old disorder! / How I used to hate it, and now- / Now I could kiss the dust on the mirror, the pipe-ashes / Over everything-all the old mess / That no strange hand interferes with. / Bless him for that!

iii. Just at first / This much contents me; why should I peer / Past the stripped arms of the rose, the metallic / Rattle of clematis dry as my hair, / There where June flushes and purples the window like sunset? I know / So well the room's other corner: the hearth / Where autumn logs smoulder, / The hob, / The kettle, the crane, the cushion he put for my feet, / And my Chair- / O Chair, always mine! / Do I dare? / What-the room so the same, his and mine, / Not a book changed, the inkstand uncleaned, / The old pipe-burn scarring the table, / The old rent in the rug, where I tripped / And he caught me-no woman's hand here / Has mended or marred; all's the same! / Why not dare, then? Oh, but to think, / If I stole to my chair, if I sat there, / Feet folded, arms stretched on the arms, / So quiet.

And waited for night and his coming. / Oh, think, when he came / And sank in the other chair, facing me, / Not a line of his face would alter, / Nor his hands fall like sun on my hair, / Nor the old dog jump on me, grinning / Yet cringing, because she half-knew / I'd found out the hole in my border, / And why my tallest auratum was dead- / But his face would be there, unseeing, / His eyes look through me; / And the old dog-not pausing / At her bowl for a long choking drink, / Or to bite the burrs from her toes, and stretch / Sideward to the fire, dreaming over their tramp in the stubble- / Would creep to his feet / Bristling a little. / And I.

I should be there, in the old place, / All the old life bubbling up in me, / And to him no more felt than the sap / Struggling up unseen in the clematis- / Ah, then, then, then I were dead!

But what _was_ I, then? Lips and hands only- / Since soul cannot reach him without them? / Oh, heavy grave of the flesh, / Did I never once reach to him through you? / I part the branches and look.

iv. O my Chair. / But who sits in you? One like me / Aflame yet invisible! / Only I, with eyes death-anointed, / Can see her young hair, and the happy heart riding / The dancing sea of her breast! / Then she too is waiting- / And young as I was? / Was she always there? / Were her lips between all our kisses? / Did her hands know the folds of his hair? / Did she hear what I said when I loved him? / Was the room never empty? Not once? / When I leaned in that chair, which one of us two did he see? / Did he feel us both on his bosom? / How strange! If I spoke to her now she would hear me, / She alone. / Would tell me all, through her weeping, / Or rise up and curse me, perhaps- / As I might her, were she living!