Margaret Widdemer

I HAVE known great gold Sorrows:

Majestic Griefs shall serve me watchfully

Through the slow-pacing morrows:

I have knelt hopeless where sea-echoing

Dim endless voices cried of suffering

Vibrant and far in broken litany:

Where white magnolia and tuberose hauntingly

Pulsed their regretful sweets along the air—

All things most tragical, most fair,

Have still encompassed me …

I dance where in the screaming market-place

The dusty world that watches buys and sells,

With painted merriment upon my face,

Whirling my bells,

Thrusting my sad soul to its mockery.

I have known great gold Sorrows …

Shall they not mock me, these pain-haunted ones,

If it shall make them merry, and forget

That grief shall rise and set

With the unchanging, unforgetting suns

Of their relentless morrows?