Treasures of Poverty

I sometimes watch the lips of other women And think of all the kisses they have known; I sometimes touch the hands of other women In wonder at the memoried palms they own....

The kiss upon my brow was sadly given, The hands I held but once were not my own; And yet I would not change what I was given For all the kisses I have never known....

Nor would I change again my heart's white desert; O wondrous are the meetings I have known, And strange the eyes that seek me in the desert, Then smiling vanish to rejoin their own....