on a friend thrown over

'Not to look back,' you said,

'I've learned that much...'

And your face became immutable as bronze,

Ever more itself, invincibly turned

To the weather's knife, the paper-storm

Of birds and every unwitting

Childish revenance of love,

So that admiration jostled pity as you spoke

Of study, promotion, new necessities

- And I went on thinking treasonably of the girl

For whom the act of forgetting was no life's work,

Being only as far as the next man's arms away,

Whose mercy was, at best, ambiguous

- Turning loose the happy bondman,

Permanently binding

The freeman in the subtle bonds of choice.

Dawe