CONFLICT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 74

CONFLICT.

How many fires have I started in my blood With scraps of pride and.independence of the day, That have burned out and left me cold, And left your face upon the ash I I can not go by water or through wood. In peopled towns or any place at all. But that my insufficient self is lost, And I turn back defeated to your arms. 11. Through all my veins with yours should mingle, (This is my desire, secret, and denied!) And those red rivers through you flow. You would become like one of Eva’s children, I would be nothing then, I know ! 111. I am afraid of you : You are the flesh that has no strength, yet wins Its way against the heavy-muscled wise, When the guards sink down beside their spears, Drunk with magnanimous wines. IV. You, inscrutable and alien. Are like a phantom girl within a dreamWhere earth and stars ard mixed with lips and eyes, To make a-n unfamiliar Paradise. V. I must escape your tenderness and tears. Or else my world of men becomes a smoky dust, And all the efforts of this brain and hand Drift like a haze above the ruined land, Forever through the undistinguished years ! VI. I am afraid, yet in the end I see There is the inevitable surrender, If I would be wholly free. You are remembering woman, with a purpose Stronger than anything in me ! —Scudder Middleton, in the Measure.