"Am
I what the June bugs mock?
No. I am what I have hardened
To, not what I learned. A rock
Left behind in the world I gardened.
What is an eldest god? His brow
Is rock, and can rock suffer?"
Now
The house is dark. And she hears
The river running, Meramec,
Lost
in
the night, lost
in
years
She waded on the farm below
The bluff that is one solid rock,
Where the gravel and the shale
Riffle the water by the meadow;
The dim rock silent and tall,
The water talking
in
the dark.
Somewhere bed springs groan.
And first
The insects hush. Then the night
Breathes in one long breath, and then
The heart of the night stops beating. Stars
Stand dead still above the trees.
And all her being is reversed.
Her heart is pounding in another
Heart where her legs want
to
open
Like white arms. A kind of light
Stirred by the breathless trees is on
The ceiling. Is it the veil that's bright
And the goddess dark? What's all that bother
Of water talking? The night breathes out;
"And I, Emma, on that night
Betrayed the kindly brow of my father."
