The sister is twelve.
Is
beautiful like a saint.
Sits with the monster all day with pure love, calm eyes.
Has taught it a trick, to make
ciaou,
Italian-wise.
It
crooks hand in that greeting. She smiles her smile without taint.
I come, and her triptych beauty and joy stir hate
-Is it hate?-in my heart. Fool, doesn't she know that the process
Is not that joyous or simple, to bless, or unbless,
The malfeasance of nature or the filth of fate?
Can it bind or loose, that beauty in that kind,
Beauty of benediction? I trust our hope to prevail
That heart-joy
in
beauty be truth before beauty fail
And be gathered like air in the ruck of the world's wind!
I think of your goldness, of joy, how empires grind, stars are hurled.
I smile stiff, saying
ciaou,
saying
ciaou,
and think: this
is
the world.
IV
Above the beach, the vineyard
Terrace breaks to the seaward
Drop, where the cliffs fail
To a clutter of manganese shale.
Some is purple, some powdery-pale.
But the black lava chunks stand oft
The sea's grind, or indolent chuff.
The lava will withstand
The sea's beat, or insinuant hand,
And protect our patch of sand.
It
is late. The path from the beach
Crawls up. I take you. We reach
The vineyard, and at that path-angle
The hedge obtrudes a tangle
Of leaf and green bulge and a wrangle
Bee-drowsy and blowsy with white bloom,
