For the woman whose very initials are in her work.


I Prologue

That we are not beloved partners now
Should, on empathy, make debt nor endow.
I will not, as the others have, compare
your faces with abandonment or stares
of winter nor, as some did, would I brave
new words to enterprise the lasting grave--
Not when the spoils are, themselves, compost;
Turned soils and ever-falling as wheat-ghosts.


II Allegory

When first your dear departed, wearing' rake
Across the back, I thought his moment spake
Something employing spring or ending week
Until I saw a second plow where first peaked--
And Man, to tend another's touch, would know
His work is less and labours will less grow.
Dig there, at night, when Love is fast asleep,
Search with some light, the efforts of his keep.
Beneath is buried for your firmament;
Not growing, only tilling temperament.
Would you alone toil? cover scents of sweet,
Assume a smell of topsoil and of peat
For violets which seduced a yard like weeds?
Uprooted and split: feeding apple seeds.
And show a neighbor how to turn what clings,
You can remind me, on a day in spring,
I do not have the energy for orchard;
That you eat pomegranate, seed and core.
Still to me send Jacks, Dans, your Ferdinand
To learn the draught, why branches gauntly stand,
Trunks wanton but green shaken from their sleeves--
Why use of scythe and cradle at fall leaves.
And you, Induct the reason-deep, deduct all else
Your weeds and foison--anything which sells.
A bower empty: you see worth in men;
But barns sans plenty, may you comprehend
The structure and the weight of what you trade.
They are Words, each of them, by Shaper made
I have been there, a time, at garden's bottom
And seen what you'll reach, by next autumn
The hardest, buried woe for a nightly grove.
Or make your land by a morning bed and know
Full garners, fullness in your husbandry
Hence happy. Anywhere, away from me.