NIGHT is a void about me; I lie alone;

And water drips, like an idiot clicking his tongue,

Senselessly, ceaselessly, endlessly drips

Into the waiting silence, grown

Emptier for this small inhuman sound.

My love is gone, my love who is tender and young.

O smooth warm body! O passionate lips!

I have stretched forth hands in the dark and nothing found:

The silence is huge as the sky—I lie alone—

My narrow room, a darkness that knows no bound.

How shall I fill this measureless

Deep void that the taking away

Of a child’s slim beauty has made?

Slender she is and small, but the loneliness

She has left is a night no stars allay,

And I am cold and afraid.

Long, long ago, cut off from the wolfish pack,

From the warm, immediate touch of friends and mate,

Lost and alone, alone in the utter black

Of a forest night, some far-off, beast-like man,

Cowed by the cold indifferent hate

Of the northern silence, crouched in fear,

When through his bleared and suffering mind

A sudden tremor of comfort ran,

And the void was filled by a rushing wind,

And he breathed a sense of something friendly and near,

And in privation the life of God began.

Love, from your loss shall a god be born to fill

The emptiness, where once you were,

With friendly knowledge and more than a lover’s will

To ease despair?

Shall I feed longing with what it hungers after,

Seeing in earth and sea and air

A lover’s smiles, hearing a lover’s laughter,

Feeling love everywhere?

The night drags on. Darkness and silence grow,

And with them my desire has grown,

My bitter need. Alas, I know,

I know that here I lie alone.