Vernon Watkins
LACE-MAKER
Lined, wrinkled face,
Fingers of Samothrace,
Making so secretly move
In
a fragile pattern of lace
Your untranslatable love:
Dark, withdrawn from delight,
Under the water-bowl light
On a cushion spread in your room
Pricking the stretch of night
With secrets old as the womb:
Patient, you toil alone.
Eighty years are gone
Since first your fingers tossed
Those bobbins one by one
In
a craft that is almost lost.
Flashing in failing skies,
Gay Kitty Fisher's Eyes,
As
they call these Buckingham beads,
Restore that far sunrise
To your pensive widow's weeds;
And your shadowing, birdlike hand,
Migrated from a young land,
Brings, like a midnight lark,
Whiter than whitest sand,
Light running out of dark:
Fine sand, too quick to tread,
Crossed by the sea in your head
