39
torture me, Father, lest not I be thine!
Tribunal terrible
&
pure, my God,
mercy for him and me.
Faces half-fanged, Christ drives abroad,
and though the crop hopes, Jane
is
so slipshop
I cry. Evil dissolves, & love, like foam;
that love. Prattle of children powers me home,
my heart claps like the swan's
under a frenzy of
who
love me
&
who shine.
40
As
a canoe slides by on one strong stroke
hope
his
help not I, who do hardly bear
his
gift still. But whisper
I am not utterly. I pare
an
apple for my pipsqueak Mercy and
she runs &
all
need naked apples, fanned
their tinier envies.
Vomitings, trots, rashes. Can be hope a cloak?
41
for the man with cropt ears glares. My fingers tighten
my skirt. I pass. Alas! I pity
all.
Shy, shy, with me, Dorothy.
Moonrise, and frightening hoots. 'Mother,
how
long
will I be dead?' Our friend the owl
vanishes, darling, but your homing soul
retires on Heaven, Mercy:
not we one instant die, only our dark does lighten.
42
When by me
in
the dusk my child sits down
I am myself. Simon, if it's that loose,
let me wiggle it out.
You'll get a bigger one there,
&
bite.
How they loft, how their sizes delight and grate.
The proportioned, spiritless poems accumulate.
And they publish them
away
in
brutish London, for a hollow crown.
499
