Emily Brontë
On bleak Yorkshire nights,
As winter’s air soured your broken chest
Did you turn to your sisters and that brother
Who, drunk and slightly mad, still make you smile –
Did you discover through them what it was like to love?
You were not touched by any man,
You are not passion-sucked or vain
With being loved – you are only ill and coughing –
When nights came with their mists and nightmares,
When hunters rode the moors and no lover’s face
Invaded the room where you spat blood –
But you loved more than anyone –
Who more than you knew of hands and fingers,
Eyes and hair, who more than you could write
Lovers into pages taken from the vales and hills
Of Yorkshire’s wild winds and thick black rain.
You more than your sisters understood
In so a few years the heart’s most secret beating –
Virgin and bothered with high fevers
You flowed always like some great river
Through the vales and mists of passion
And by God you loved!