“flashback warm nights almost left behind / suitcase of memories / time after—”

For Poetry Monday, back to Millay:

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find, Edna St. Vincent Millay

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year’s roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,
My sky is black with small birds bearing south;
Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,
Put by my word as but an April truth–
Autumn is no less on me that a rose
Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.


From her 1922 collection The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems.

---L.

Subject quote from Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper.