MAY WOODS
by: Zella Muriel Wright
- OU are like all the others--
- "Will she
- Or will she not
- Give me her body?"
- That is the question
- That teases and torments you
- And sends you reeling forth
- Into the night,
- Singing to the stars;
- Or striding angrily down dusty roads,
- Striking off the heads
- Of helpless flowers
- With your cane.
-
- And I smile at your agitation
- The smile you call inscrutable.
- I smile because I know
- Only too well
- That sooner or later--sooner or later--
- Even I,
- Knowing the pain
- And the cost of the aftermath of love....
- And after you have known
- The full strength of my arms
- To hold you.
- After you have felt the sting and fire of me,
- After you have known my longest kiss--
- A kiss which almost strangles----
-
- Instead of being more to you
- I shall be less....
- And you will go
- Because
- No longer
- I smile
- The smile
- The smile you call inscrutable.
"May Woods'" is reprinted
from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New York: Crown
Publishers, 1921. |
MORE POEMS BY ZELLA MURIEL WRIGHT |
|