Edna St. Vincent Millay. (A new poem).(Poem)

 
Edna St. Vincent Millay 
(1892-1950) 
 
   Unquiet spirit, by what right 
   Do I come to disturb your dust 
   In this omniscient October light 
   A half century almost from the day 
   You rambled down your library stairs 
   Into eternal night? By what right 
   Do I invade the dignity of your house, 
   Ransack the closets, shelves and drawers, 
   Measuring your dresses and jewelry, 
   Picturing you alive, challenging me? 
 
   I breathe deep, hoping a sweet scent 
   Of you, long breathless, might arise, 
   Some stray atom of your spirit meant 
   For mine alone. We are not so different 
   Maybe--man, woman, alive or dead, 
   Souls confronting the inarticulate. 
   I come to write your life, a ghoulish trade-- 
   Like others of my time and not like you 
   Who made a fortune making Fortune rhyme. 
   To make my living I must turn to prose. 
   This is what has brought me to your house, 
   Gardens, letters, grave and diary. 
   And really, if you didn't want biography, 
   Why do you preserve all of this stuff, 
   Your books, shoes and teacups, lingerie, 
   A hat made from a peacock, golden coat 
   Cut from a lion or an ocelot? 
 
   The fiery swirl of hair clipped from your head 
   In childhood to make tresses for a doll; 
   The doll itself2. Sits staring, cracked and bald 
   Above the bureau where the hair is kept, 
   The relic of a goddess, wrapped 
   In tissue, the red hair that drove men mad, 
   Made them write love letters by the yard, 
   Pleading, jealous, tormented by need. 
   You kept them all. Had you no regard 
   For the dignity of the dead, no modesty? 
   Did you mean to burn them before you died? 
   I want to think you left the hoard for me, 
   Calling me to bring you back to life, 
   Dangerous, voluptuous, green-eyed: 
   Better a poet, ...