Mute Ode

When I saw you coming I walked away

stopping myself from saying your name

then realizing, all this time, that it had been

as it was: me refusing to say a word. I went

on pretending so I could keep this world

from ending. Since I've been forgotten, 

I've often returned to this thought, 

that holding back the truth cannot comfort 

the distraught. Even as you vanished, 

inside me you were wrought. The unsaid

can never be lost; a hand on your chest,

wristbands, a static screen, the path made by

a river drying, proof of burnt homes in a storm,

your favorite book, me one day returning it.

After Dean Young

Animal

Could you so arrantly of earth, so cool,
With course harsh hair and rapid agile pace,
So built to beat boys in a swimming race
Or drive with sheer terns to a salty pool,
So lean, so animally beautiful--
Your breasts look sideways like a heifer's face,
And you stand sometimes with a surly grace
And mutinous blur eye-fires like a bull--
Could you from this most envied poise descend,
Moved by some force in me I know not of,
To mix with me and be to me a woman,
Diana down from heaven could not lend
More ecstasy, or fill my faltering human
Heart's hunger with a more celestial love.

--Max Eastman