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Title: Mutilation
Author: D. H. Lawrence [
More Titles by Lawrence]
A THICK mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat.
I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up.
Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.
I hold the night in horror;
I dare not turn round.
To-night I have left her alone.
They would have it I have left her for ever.
Oh my God, how it aches
Where she is cut off from me!
Perhaps she will go back to England.
Perhaps she will go back,
Perhaps we are parted for ever.
If I go on walking through the whole breadth of Germany
I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.
Over there is Russia--Austria, Switzerland, France, in a circle!
I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.
It aches in me.
What is England or France, far off,
But a name she might take?
I don't mind this continent stretching, the sea far away;
It aches in me for her
Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching;
Not even longing,
It is only agony.
A cripple!
Oh God, to be mutilated!
To be a cripple!
And if I never see her again?
I think, if they told me so
I could convulse the heavens with my horror.
I think I could alter the frame of things in my agony.
I think I could break the System with my heart.
I think, in my convulsion, the skies would break.
She too suffers.
But who could compel her, if she chose me against them all?
She has not chosen me finally, she suspends her choice.
Night folk, Tuatha De Danaan, dark Gods, govern her sleep,
Magnificent ghosts of the darkness, carry off her decision in sleep,
Leave her no choice, make her lapse me-ward, make her,
Oh Gods of the living Darkness, powers of Night.
WOLFRATSHAUSEN
[The end]
D. H. Lawrence's poem: Mutilation
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