Evelyn Scott (writer)

Evelyn Scott (January 17, 1893 – August 3, 1963) was an American novelist, playwright and poet. A modernist and experimental writer, Scott "was a significant literary figure in the 1920s and 1930s, but she eventually sank into critical oblivion."

Her first husband was Cyril Kay-Scott, but she also had an affair with Owen Merton, father of Thomas Merton.

Scott later married the English writer John Metcalfe.

She sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms Ernest Souza and Elsie Dunn.

'AFTER YOUTH

Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth! Exotic colors in the lamplit darkness of wet streets, Musk and roses in the twilight, The moon in the park like a golden balloon ...

Then to awaken and find the shadows fled, The music gone ... Empty, bleak! My soul has grown very small and shriveled in my body. It no longer looks out. It rattles around, And inside my body it begins to look, Staring all around inside my body, Like a crab in a crevice, Staring with bulging eyes At the strange place in which it finds itself.'

...
Wikipedia