CLOTHES

by: Jean Starr Untermeyer (1886-1970)

INCE the earliest days I have dressed myself

In fanciful clothes;

Trying to satisfy a whispering insistence.

There was so much I dared not give

To speech or act;

So I put romance and fantasy

Into my raiment.

In that dreamy girlhood

My clothes were like my thoughts;

Vague and sentimental.

They were of misty greens

And faded lavenders;

Like cloudy colors in entangled woods,

Like the budding thoughts of a young girl.

 

Later on when womanhood came,

And Motherhood sat consciously on me,

I essayed the dignified and noble

In a trailing gown of gray.

 

But Spring came,

And with it a dress of juicy green

And tricky yellows,

With darts of black,

Like bare twigs showing through the bright leaves.

After a while I revelled in the sophistication

Of a gown of black;

Cut low, swirling in worldly curves.

And once I dared the long line of the siren

In a gown of weird brocade.

 

But these things have not silenced the whispers.

Something urgent wants a tongue.

My clothes are not me, myself;

Something real escapes in the translation of color and fabric.

 

I think I should go naked into the streets,

And wander unclothed into people's parlors.

The incredulous eyes of the bewildered world

Might give me back my true image. . . .

Maybe in the glances of others

I would find out what I really am.

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