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Home: Poetry: Conrad Aiken: Our Secret Selves
| OUR SECRET SELVES |
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a poem by Conrad Aiken
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- The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
- It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
- Down golden-windowed walls.
- We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
- We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
- But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
- We shall lie down again.
- The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
- Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
- One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
- We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
- But whether he lives or dies we do not know.
- One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
- The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
- He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
- It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
- The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
- And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him,
- And throwing him pennies, we bear away
- A mournful echo of other times and places,
- And follow a dream . . . a dream that will not stay.
- Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow;
- Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting;
- In broken slow cascades.
- The gardens extend before us . . . We spread out swiftly;
- Trees are above us, and darkness. The canyon fades . . .
- And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
- Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
- Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . .
- A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
- Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.
- We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
- We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down;
- We close our eyes to music in bright cafees.
- We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent.
- We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays.
- And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
- Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
- Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
- Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
- Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.
| "Our Secret Selves" is reprinted from The House of Dust: A Symphony. Conrad Aiken. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1920. |
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