Mary Morison Webster
The rain-drenched street
What are the thoughts
Once in the warm firelight,
You do not talk,
When we are back within
The dark flower of this dissonance
The rain-drenched street,
O lonely, lonely am I,
Indefinitely stretched before our eyes,
And our four feet
In rhythmic wise,
Moving without noise, noisily, in the crowd,
Under a wet umbrella, two heads bowed.
Jogging your brain, as on and on we go,
Two dots in a series of black dots
Moved to and fro?
I hear your footsteps, but I cannot guess
The secret of your secret loneliness.
We had touched hands and known
Fellowship sweet to-night,
And now alone,
Endlessly, under the shop-signs in the rain,
Single and sad we go and separate again.
Or slacken down your pace a bit;
The lamps are lit,
And on we walk,
Nor speaking, nor seeing, underneath our cloud
Of wet umbrella...dripping...two heads bowed.
The quiet of the firelit dining-room,
How shall this secret sin,
This strange, intolerable gloom
Be erased between us? How shall I forget,
This solitary, speechless march to-night in the wet?
That rears its growth, ugly and brown,
Betwixt your mood and mine, can by no chance
Be trampled or cut down,
Nor dragged forth by the root with contrite voice,
On this or other evening of your choice.
Indefinitely stretched, and to and fro,
Moving umbrellas and a haste of feet,
While thus, incognito,
We impose our sinister selves upon the crowd,
Our suffering, sinister substance, two heads bowed.
Lagging dejectedly behind
Your body's pace, outdistanced by
The fanged, strange monster of your mind;
Outcast, outdistanced, stumbling in my pain,
I walk alone beside you in the rain.
