Because I Would Not Admit
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
-William Blake
Because I would not admit
that I had nurtured
an enemy within my breast-
a lover who wanted to gnaw
my secret rose,
a lover who wanted to press me
between the covers of a book,
then burn it,
a lover-usurper who wanted
to take my soul-
I nearly died,
running my car upon rocks
like a badly steered sloop,
crashing into trees
like a hurricane gale,
burning my arms in ovens
(when I thought I was only
baking bread). . . .
To admit the betrayal
was worse than
the fact of betrayal-
for I loved him
as leaves love sun,
turning my face to him,
turning my hips, my womb
to be filled with a dream
of children, a dream of books
& babies sprouting like leaves
from a spring tree,
a dream of trees that leaked blood
instead of sap. . . .
The dream¹s the thing-
the dream we die for,
turning our faces to the sun,
eyes closed, never seeing it has
gone out:
dead star, it blazes coldly
over a dead planet
while we bask in its afterglow,
now remembered in the mind.
He was fond
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poem by Erica Jong
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