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....