I can not live with you...

I cannot live with you
It would be life 
And life is over there
Behind the shelf


The sexton keeps the key to         
Putting up
Our life  his porcelain 
Like a cup


Discarded of the housewife 
Quaint or broken         
A newer Sèvres pleases 
Old ones crack 


I could not die with you 
For one must wait
To shut the other’s gaze down —       
You could not 


And I  could I stand by
And see you freeze 
Without my right of frost 
Death’s privilege?       


Nor could I rise with you 
Because your face
Would put out Jesus’ 
That new grace


Glow plain 'n foreign       
On my homesick eye 
Except that you  than he
Shone closer by 


They ’d judge us how?
For you served Heaven  you know         
Or sought to 
I could not 


Because you saturated sight 
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence       
As Paradise 


And were you lost  I would be 
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame       


And were you saved 
And I condemned to be
Where you were not 
That self were hell to me 


So we must keep apart         
You there  I here 
With just the door ajar
That oceans are 
And prayer 

And that pale sustenance Despair...!