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Elsie Yehling
Japanese Briefs (1938)

I
Night’s altar
Hears the song of ten thousand stars:
My praise is unnoticed,
Unheard.

II
Her hands
Are yellow as parchment and more wrinkled
With gaunt bones and meshing veins;
Must hands be pierced with nails
To be crucified?

III
My love
Is a silent candle,
Hidden
That no unkind wind
May blow it out.

IV
My song
Lacks the harmony of thought
To blend its rhythm
With the silence
of time.

V
The candle of your love
Will always burn;
There are no gusts of passion
To extinguish it.

VI
The trees
Show no such fear as I:
Time will be kind to them;
I must die.

VII
My clock runs fast;
Shall time be slowed
Because my hours are filled
With nothingness?

VIII
Night was created
That stars might teach their silent wisdom
To man,
Who has none.

IX
Time
keeps no records;
Man,
Being finite,
Records the little that is his.

X
The birds of Night
Have flown,
Leaving a midnight feather
Of thought
To be stroked and smoothed.

‘Japanese Briefs’ appeared in Educational Forum 2 (1937-1938), p. 134.