The Poets' Wives Read Online Free PDF

streets boil themselves into a cauldron but I burn with an even greater fire that only fades with each passing day and when I must be on my own for a while I lie and listen to the strange sounds that climb up from the heated confusion that labours there. And then I start to think that it is the foul and poisonous vapours of the city that have killed my child and I call God’s judgement on it and hope to see it plunged into the lake of fire. Will attends me lovingly both day and night and then slowly I begin to see that he has come to understand his loss and his spirits sink once more and even though outwardly he tries to continue in his tenderness, soon it becomes a duty that must be rendered rather than a love that must be shown.
    I grow stronger in the weeks that follow so he returns to his work but it is as if every bright hope has dimmed and his darkened imagination produces only what is shaped by a sad despair. He works on with his Songs of Experience and everything his hand forms conspires to renew my grief. Our ‘Infant Joy’ becomes ‘Infant Sorrow’, the Garden of Love becomes filled with graves and briars. And when I think I am well enough to help him once more my first task is to colour a poem called ‘A Little Girl Lost’ and even though I read no more than the title because my eyes are blurred I cannot bring myself to touch it as I think of our child and wonder where she wanders now and if some angel descending Jacob’s ladder will be able to take her by the hand and secure her passage into Heaven. He sees my tears but says nothing and I wonder if it’s because in his mind he has started to blame me for our loss. And every waking minute of the day I am haunted by strange and sorrowful thoughts.
    One morning just as dawn’s light begins to creep into our room I slip from our bed where he is still asleep and go to where we work because I need to look again at the image that accompanies ‘Infant Joy’ and because my hands need to touch it and feel what answers it may give for what now feels like a terrible mystery and a punishment for something I must have done. But what once I thought was beautiful now offers only a reflection of my own sorrow and the red petals of the womb-shaped blossom that cradle the mother and newborn child are changed into the colour of blood and its very heart is shredded into shards. I want to cry but all the tears are dried up and my sorrow finds a poor release in the shiver of my body and the quickening of my breathing. I go to the window where the first light of day only serves to strengthen the image in my hands and then seeps across the copper plates, the paints and oils and settles on the pile of milky paper. What future will be painted there? Sometimes I see it blotted and stained as if by the soot-blackened hands of the chimney sweeps who parade once more in my imagination like sprites from the gates of Hell itself; sometimes it bears the image of a lost child wandering in dark woods unable to find the safety of home.
    ‘It’s a suffering that’s difficult to bear,’ he says and I look up to see him standing in the doorway, ‘but God willing we shall have another child.’ I want him to take me in his arms but he turns away and I hold my hand up to the empty space where he stood until the light sifts motes through the splay of my fingers. And because I speak only silent words he does not hear me tell him that God is never willing and that there will be no miracle where Christ blesses the barren fig tree into fruitful life, does not hear me tell him that my womb is withered and closed for the rest of my life.
     
    Mr Blake says I must rest and it’s true that for a time I take to my bed again but I think the weariness is in my head more than in my body. His pictures are dark now and even the colours seemed edged with bitterness and I can’t bring myself to work them or help in the ways I used to. For the first time in our marriage when he is possessed of the spirit