The Separation

de Stephen Spender

When the night within whose deep

Our minds and bodies melt in love,

Instead of joining us, divides

With winds and seas that tear between

Our separated sleep —

Then to my lidless eyes that stare

Beyond my dark and climbing fears,

Your answering warm island lies

In the gilt wave of desire

Far as the day from here.

Here where I lie is the hot pit

Crowding on the mind with coal

And the will turned against it

Only drills new seams of darkness

Through the dark-surrounding whole.

Our vivid suns of happiness

Withered from summer, drop their flowers;

Hands of the longed, withheld tomorrow

Fold on the hands of yesterday

In double sorrow.

The present voices and the faces

Of strangers mirroring each other

In their foreign happiness,

Lay waste and populate my map

With meaningless names of places.

To bring me back to you, the earth

Must turn, the aeroplane

Must fly across the glittering spaces,

The clocks must run, the scenery change

From mountains into town.

Against a wheel I press my brain,

My blood roars through a night of wood

But my heart uncoils no shoot

From the centre of a silence

Of motionless violence.

And when we meet — the ribs will still

Divide the flesh-enfolding dream

And the winds and seas of time

Ruin the islands with their stream

However compassed be the will;

Unless within the turning night

Where we are ever separate,

Our eyes drink in each other’s silence,

Unmeasuring patience

Threaded upon their secret light.

Shuttered by dark at the still centre

Of the world’s circular terror,

O tender birth of life and mirror

Of lips, where love at last finds peace

Released from the will’s error.