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I raise up the bridge and the tower. I burn the knit coffin in sunlight For the child who has woven this city: Who loved, doing this, to die: Who thought like a spider, and sang, And completed the maze ofmy fingers, Dead before I was born. The vegetableI(ing Just after the sun Has closed, I swing the fresh paint ofthe door And have opened the new, green dark. From my house and my silent folk I step, and lay me in ritual down. One night each April I unroll the musty sleeping-bag And beat from it a cloud ofsleeping moths. I leave the house, which leaves Its window-light on the ground In gold frames picturing grass, And lie in the unconsecrated grove Ofsmall, suburban pines, And never move, as the ground not ever shall move, Remembering, remembering to feel The still earth tum my house around the sun Where all is dark, unhoped-for, and undone. I cannot sleep until the lights are out, And the lights ofthe house ofgrass, also, Snap off, from underground. Beneath the gods and animals ofHeaven, Mismade inspiringly, like them, I fall to a colored sleep Enveloping the house, or coming out Ofthe dark side ofthe sun, And begin to believe a dream I never once have had, The Vegetable King / 53 Of being part ofthe acclaimed rebirth Ofthe ruined, calm world, in spring, When the drowned god and the dreamed-ofsun Unite, to bring the red, the blue, The common yellow flower out ofearth Ofthe tended and untended garden: when the chosen man, Hacked apart in the growing cold Ofthe year, by the whole ofmindless nature is assembled From the trembling, untroubled river. 1 believe 1 become that man, become As bloodless as a god, within the water, Who yet returns to walk a woman's rooms Where flowers on the mantel-piece are those Bought by his death. A warm wind springs From the curtains. Blue china and milk on the table Are mild, convincing, and strange. At that time it is light, And, as my eyelid lifts An instant before the other, the last star is withdrawn Alive, from its fiery fable. 1 would not think to move, Nor cry, "I live," just yet, Nor shake the twinkling horsehair ofmy head, Nor rise, nor shine, nor live With any but the slant, green, mummied light And wintry, bell-swung undergloom ofwaters Wherethrough my severed head has prophesied For the silent daffodil and righteous Leaf, and now has told the truth. This is the time foresaid, when 1 must enter The waking house, and return to a human love Cherished on faith through winter: That time when 1 in the night Ofwater lay, with sparkling animals oflight And distance made, with gods Which move through Heaven only as the spheres Into the Stone / 54 Are moved: by music, music. Mother, son, and wife Who live with me: I am in death And waking. Give me the looks that recall me. None knows why you have waited In the cold, thin house for winter To turn the inmost sunlight green And blue and red with life, But it must be so, since you have set These flowers upon the table, and milk for him Who, recurring in this body, bears you home Magnificent pardon, and dread, impending crime. The Enclosure Down the track ofa Philippine Island We rode to the aircraft in trucks, Going past an enclosure ofwomen, Those nurses from sick-tents, With a fume ofsand-dust at our backs. We leapt to the tail-gate, And drew back, then, From the guards ofthe trembling compound, Where the nailed wire sang like a jew's-harp, And the women like prisoners paced. In the dog-panting night-fighter climbing, Held up between the engines like a child, I rested my head on my hands; The drained mask fell from my face. I thought I could see Through the dark and the heart-pulsing wire, Their dungarees float to the floor, And their light-worthy hair shake down In curls and remarkable shapes That the heads ofmen cannot grow, And women stand deep in a ring Oflight, and whisper in panic unto us The Enclosure / 55 ...

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