Page:Body of This Death.djvu/20

Forever enough to part grass over the stones
By some brook or well, the lovely seed-shedding stalks;
To hear in the single wind diverse branches
Repeating their sounds to the sky—that sky like scaled mackerel,
Fleeing the fields—to be defended from silence,
To feel my body as arid, as safe as a twig
Broken away from whatever growth could snare it
Up to a spring, or hold it softly in summer
Or beat it under in snow.
I must get well.
Walk on strong legs, leap the hurdles of sense,
Reason again, come back to my old patchwork logic,
Addition, subtraction, money, clothes, clocks,
Memories (freesias, smelling slightly of snow and of flesh
In a room with blue curtains) ambition, despair.
I must feel again who had given feeling over,
Challenge laughter, take tears, play the piano,
Form judgments, blame a crude world for disaster.

To escape is nothing. Not to escape is nothing.
The farmer's wife stands with a halo of darkness
Rounding her head. Water drips in the kitchen
Tapping the sink. To-day the maples have split
Limb from the trunk with the ice, a fresh wooden wound.
The vines are distorted with ice, ice burdens the breaking
Roofs I have told you of.

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