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....