Humiliation
By D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)
I have been so innerly proud, and so long alone,
Do not leave me, or I shall break.
Do not leave me.
What should I do if you were gone again
So soon?
What should I look for?
Where should I go?
What should I be, I myself,
"I"?
What would it mean, this
I?
Do not leave me.
What should I think of death?
If I died, it would not be you:
It would be simply the same
Lack of you.
The same want, life or death,
Unfulfilment,
The same insanity of space
You not there for me.
Think, I daren't die
For fear of the lack in death.
And I daren't live.
Unless there were a morphine or a drug.
I would bear the pain.
But always, strong, unremitting
It would make me not me.
The thing with my body that would go on living
Would not be me.
Neither life nor death could help.
Think, I couldn't look towards death
Nor towards the future:
Only not look.
Only myself
Stand still and bind and blind myself.
God, that I have no choice!
That my own fulfilment is up against me
Timelessly!
The burden of self-accomplishment!
The charge of fulfilment!
And God, that she is necessary!
Necessary, and I have no choice!
Do not leave me.