Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/141

 I think beauty is a bad bargain made of life. Men's iron sinews hew them room in the world And use deceits to gain them trophies: O, when our beauty fails us did we not use Deceits, where were our room in the world— Only our room in the world? Are not the songs and devices of men Moulds they have made after my scarlet mouth, Of cunning words and contours of bronze And viols and gathered air? They without song have sung me Boldly and shamelessly. I am no wanton, no harlot; I have been pleased and smiled my pleasure, I am a wife with a woman's natural ways. Yet through the shadow of the pomegranates Filters a poison day by day, And to a malady turns The blond, the ample music of my heart: Inward to eat my heart My thoughts are worms that suck my softness all away. I watch the dumb eyeless hours Drop their tears, then shapeless moaning drop.