The Beloved

Love, when they told me you were dead, I replied not;
I smiled, and they thought me mad.
They wept anointing thy body, they swathed thee in linen bands
and laid thee in the earth.
Their hands touched thee as a thing sacred, they mourned for thee
with shaken hearts.
It was dawn, my beloved, and they came in, into my room, where I lay
close to sleep smiling, and they told me you were dead.
I smiled hearing the swallows coming and going under the eaves,
and they told me you were dead.
The earth dreamed in dews, the sheep were in the pastures,
and they told me you were dead.

O my beloved, these knew thee not.