London Sonnets

SOMETIMES when I think of love

I hear a heavy voice repeat

“There’s a good doctor up the street.”

And either it seems I am hard at hearing

Or stupid perhaps or terribly fearing.

For its late of a winter night and raining

With cry of wind; or is something complaining?

One lamp in the street and a leafless tree

And a thing is moving that frightens me,

With fingers that hover about my nape

A shape like a hand and yet not a shape.

Now all that we had in the past is over

Each lover’s alone, the love from the lover.

No comforting hand for me in the gloom,

No voice of mine in the darkened room.

Where is the music and where are the songs?

For love has crept off ashamed of his wrongs.

Poor love has gone off to rail at passion,

And he will not wait for the night to fashion

Out of pain and fear and anguish and danger,

A lover strange with his love a stranger,

And yet, as they were at the opera

Incredibly close and familiar,

Incredibly close as once on the river

When each is a gift and each is a giver.

Incredibly close and all they have hoarded

Of life and of love in this moment rewarded.

Rewarded! Has love in the darkness heard

Of the little lost shadow, the small lost third?

Love is returning—to find them alone,

And if love be a sinner, who casts a stone?

Shattered and beaten and blindingly sure

Of love and themselves and strong to endure

He finds them, by pain more lastingly crowned

Than ever by joy and by laughter were bound

Happier lovers and lovers untaunted

By the shameful cries these lovers have haunted.

If this be their love, who out of the pit

Being a devil challenges it?

In heaven assayed, in hell-fire priced

Who casts the first stone? Not I, says Christ.

You will not wonder nor will you reprove

If I think of this, when I think of love.