sane and spring-like

I have big plans for the rest of the month (not really big plans, just a spreadsheet), so here is one last sonnet for the road. Okay, actually, I am breaking a rule: here are two last sonnets for the road, because today I cannot choose. I always forget how fucking flawless Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnets are until I'm reading them again, and then they knock the breath right out of me. Angry feminist readers and complicated, multi-various love are pretty much the fastest ways to my heart.

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

*

I pray you if you love me, bear my joy
A little while, or let me weep your tears;
I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy
Your destiny's bright spinning—the dull shears
Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread,—
Nor can you well be less aware how fine,
How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted
Endures the golden fortune that is mine.
I pray you for this day at least, my dear,
Fare by my side, that journey in the sun;
Else must I turn me from the blossoming year
And walk in grief the way that you have gone.
Let us go forth together in the spring:
Love must be this, if it be anything.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), Sonnets VIII and V (respectively) from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, 1920, of which I have a beautiful and battered first edition that I picked up in a used bookstore one poetry month past, and may mean that I never post any Edna St. Vincent Millay poems that do not appear in this book.