Fiddler's Farewell/Therapy
Therapy
There is a wayOf healing love with love,They say.But I say no!What! shall pain comfort pain,Fever calm fever,Woe minister to woe?
Shall tear, remembering,Wash cool remembering tear?Shall scar play host to scar,Loneliness shelter loneliness;And is forgetting here?
Poor patch-work of the heart,This healing love with love;Binding the wound to wound,The smart to smart!Grafting the dream upon the other dreamAs a gardener grafts tree to tree,And both from the same wild rootBearing their bitter fruit: The new dream dreaming in the old,The old dream in the new—And neither dreaming true.
Is there, I wonder,A heaven above the heaven we knew?And is there underOur dream's stern wakingA sterner hell?And shall we know them too?
One thing I know:Of an unreckoned giving that is a taking,A wrong, a robbery!Perhaps you so wronged me;I so robbed you.
Therapy—therapy—I am content to feelThis health of heart that will not heal;I am content to thinkThat I am one with hunger,Given to thirst,And that I need not eat nor drink.I am full-nourished so.
They sayThere is a wayOf healing love with love.But I say no!*** Beyond the sandsOf all they sayI see you still,Holding toward me those eager handsI could not fill;My hands still curve and close,Deeming they hoardThe shining things you pouredThat I let spill.
Over us lift the years—Hill upon hillOf days that wither into night,And nights that ache to day;Reiterated emptiness of shade and lightCrowding the empty way.
Up to this sullen therapyOf time,Shall we two climb?***I am too tired to climb;Nor would I goSo far from the loved overthrow.Climb you to healing! while I keepVigil in this lost placeA little while;WeepIf I choose, The honest abject tear,Let the grief break and pour;Gather the shadows comfortably near,And sleep as children sleep.
A little little while!To wake and smile,Indifferent to the dark,Holding to me my one-time joyAs children clutch an ancient battered toyThey will not have renewed;Smile, and lie closer to a lossThat tunes itself to gain,(Inexorable lullaby),Lie softer, safer,Pillowed on fortitude—Drowsy—Beneath my pain.