11
Chapped souls ours, by the day Spring's strong winds swelled,
Jack's pulpits arched, more glad. The shawl I pinned
flaps like a shooting soul
might
in
such weather Heaven send.
Succumbing half,
in
spirit, to a salmon sash
I prod the nerveless novel succotash-
I must be disciplined,
in
arms, against that one, and our dissidents, and myself.
12
Versing, I shroud among the dynasties;
quaternion on quaternion, tireless I phrase
anything past, dead, far,
sacred, for a barbarous place.
-To please your wintry father? all this bald
abstract didactic rime I read appalled
harassed for your fame
mistress neither of fiery nor velvet verse, on your knees
13
hopeful & shamefast, chaste, laborious, odd,
whom the sea tore. - The damned roar with loss,
so they hug & are mean
with themselves, and I cannot
be
thus.
Why then do I repine, sick, bad, to long
after what must not be? I lie wrong
once more. For at fourteen
I found my heart more carnal and sitting loose from
God,
14
vanity
&
the follies of youth took hold of me;
then the pox blasted, when the Lord returned.
That year for my sorry face
so-much-older Simon burned,
so Father smiled, with love. Their will
be
done.
He
to
me ill lingeringly, learning to shun
a bliss, a lightning blood
vouchsafed, what did seem life. I kissed his Mystery.
