She stands there waiting by the draperies

(dark satin dense with pleats and folds).

As if framed by their spurious drama, she's

an actor their thick fabric holds.

Since leaving girlhood (not so long ago),

it's seemed that she — and someone — traded places.

Her heavy, piled-up hair has tired her so.

The shirred gown makes her feel childlike, as though

it eavesdrops on her through its many creases:

her homesickness and her pathetic dreams;

what later on, life may turn out to be

(different; more real; the way a novel seems —

entrancing; breathless with calamity);

that she might save some treasured thing, and keep

it in her jewel box, scented to impart

a lulling memory that's daydream-deep;

that in her diary she might make a start

at last, and that her letters might not mock it

as she forms them — not turn lying prose;

that she might bear one petal of a rose

she's plucked, inside the heavy, hollow locket

lying on the breath it rises from;

just once to wave her slender, just-ringed hand

there, through the window, would suffice her and

would be enough to last for months to come.

Dame vor dem Spiegel

Wie in einem Schlaftrunk Spezerein,

löst sie leise in dem flüssigklaren

Spiegel ihr ermüdetes Gebaren;

und sie tut ihr Lächeln ganz hinein.

Und sie wartet, daß die Flüssigkeit

davon steigt; dann gießt sie ihre Haare

in den Spiegel und, die wunderbare

Schulter hebend aus dem Abendkleid,

trinkt sie still aus ihrem Bild. Sie trinkt,

was ein Liebender im Taumel tränke,

prüfend, voller Mißtraun; und sie winkt

erst der Zofe, wenn sie auf dem Grunde

ihres Spiegels Lichter findet, Schränke

und das Trübe einer späten Stunde.