White Hyacinth and Poppy

Too white to catch the thing the sonnet meant
You thought to make our sharp sweet past recur;
Not knowing that beneath the wording went
A scarlet thread^___which called not you but her

To mind^___who is more dear to me than you
And whom I can't forget! I can't forget!
Whose ecstasy is webbed with scarlet too,
Whose crimson memory is with me yet.

Our lifted hearts those nights beneath your lamp,
Your worn beloved books, the chaste quick glow
Of your retort were in the octette's stamp,
^___Should have reclaimed me as you hoped. But oh,

There was the sestette's meaning you'd despise
That fragrant, smoke-fogged, smelled of her instead . . .
. . . White, white one, nights I spent beneath your eyes
I too should not have found the scarlet thread.

^__Margaret E. Haughawout.

Sheep's Clothing
Margaret E. Haughawout
Page 42
(Pittsburg, Kansas: __. 1929)