Man Against the Sky: A Book of Poems

<h2> John Gorham </h2> <p>"Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham,<br/> Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not;<br/> Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight<br/> Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "I'm over here to tell you what the moon already<br/> May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;<br/> I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,<br/> And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham,<br/> Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;<br/> I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,<br/> And you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland,<br/> But you're the one to make of them as many as you need.<br/> And then about the vanishing. It's I who mean to vanish;<br/> And when I'm here no longer you'll be done with me indeed."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!<br/> How am I to know myself until I make you smile?<br/> Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you,<br/> And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens<br/> Makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun;<br/> You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland,<br/> Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham;<br/> All you say is easy, but so far from being true<br/> That I wish you wouldn't ever be again the one to think so;<br/> For it isn't cats and butterflies that I would be to you."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "All your little animals are in one picture&mdash;<br/> One I've had before me since a year ago to-night;<br/> And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland,<br/> Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight."&mdash;<br/> <br/> "Won't you ever see me as I am, John Gorham,<br/> Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant?<br/> Somewhere in me there's a woman, if you know the way to find her.<br/> Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?"<br/> <br/> "I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland;<br/> And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well<br/> Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten,<br/> As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell."<br/></p> <p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"></SPAN></p> <br/> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />