FINDING A POEM
281
I went about this in two ways. First, I added new material. After
my original first stanza, I added a new one about the time when the
child took her first breath and, with it, accepted her life. At the end
of the poem, I added two stanzas: first, one stanza about her present
refusal of breath (presented, however, as a memory of an earlier at–
tack); finally, a stanza to sum up what I wanted to say to her, and
what could only be said more or less doctrinally, but which I hoped
was new enough, or personal enough, to be worth an abstract statement.
Since this new material brought with it a progression from the
time of the child's birth to her present illness, it seemed that the ma–
terial already in the poem should be rearranged to fit this chronological
order. This involved numerous small changes which will be obvious;
the largest change involved taking the original last stanza (about the
blackbird and the killdeers), which dealt with the breakup of the mar–
riage, and moving this material back before the original third stanza
(about hacking the wrenched limbs off the trees), which dealt with
the divorce and separation.
I found also, that to make these additions and changes, I had to
change my stanza pattern by adding one more syllable in each of the
first three lines of every stanza, and two more syllables in the fourth
line. Finally, I had to give up my lines about stone-skipping and the
Sunday lovers on the riverbank. This nearly broke my heart, but I
promised myself to work them into a later poem. Like almost every
other promise I have ever made myself, this one remains unfulfilled.
This, then, is the final version which the poem reached after dozens
and dozens of intervening versions:
HEART'S NEEDLE, vi.
Easter has come around
again; the river
is
ITising
over the thawed ground
and the banksides. When you come you bring
an tegg dyet1i lavender.
We shout along
o~r
Ibank to hear
our Ivoices returning from the hills to. Imeet us.
We need the landscape to repeat us.
You lived on this bank first.
While nine months 1illl!ld your term, we knew
how your lungs, immersed
in the womb, miraculously grew
their useless folds
till
