POEM
“As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other”
As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies
O my lady, my fairest dear, my sweetest, loveliest one
Your lips have splashed my dull house with the speech of flowers
My hands are hallowed where they touched over your
soft curving.
It is good to be weary from that brilliant work
It is being God to feel your breathing under me
A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning . . .
Don’t let anyone in to wake us.
“ ‘As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other’ ” by Kenneth Patchen, from The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen, copyright © 1942 by Kenneth Patchen. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Source: The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1968)
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