Song
Stranger, you who hide my love
In the curved cheek of a smile
And sleep with her upon a tongue
Of soft lies that beguile,
Your paradisal ecstasy
Is justified is justified
By hunger of the beasts beneath
The overhanging cloud
Who to snatch quick pleasures run
Before their momentary sun
Be eclipsed by death.
Lightly, lightly from my sleep
She stole, our vows of dew to break
Upon a day of melting rain
Another love to take:
Her happy happy perfidy
Was justified was justified
Since compulsive needs of sense
Clamour to be satisfied
And she was never one to miss
Plausible happiness
Of a new experience.
I, who stand beneath a bitter
Blasted tree, with the green life
Of summer joy cut from my side
By that self-justifying knife,
In my exiled misery
Were justified were justified
If upon two lives I preyed
Or punished with my suicide,
Or murdered pity in my heart
Or two other lives did part
To make the world pay what I paid.
Oh, but supposing that I climb
Alone to a high room of clouds
Up a ladder of the time
And lie upon a bed alone
And tear a feather from a wing
And listen to the world below
And write round my high paper walls
Anything and everything
Which I know and do not know!
Copyright Credit: Stephen Spender, "Song" from New Collected Poems, published by Faber. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Stephen Spender.
Source: Collected Poems 1928-1985 (Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1985)