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 Deep Country Epitaph Here lies untouched by sun or snow The flesh of one content to go Out of a place of age and pain To which she’ll not return again. She rests beside her husband now Who kept, like her, his wedding vow Nor thought of any other course— Neglect, adultery, divorce. Standards upheld without complaint— Denial, duty, self-restraint— She needlepointed that first fall, The Ten Commandments on the wall. Six decades took her through each state That plighted troths enumerate, The bumper crops, the barren land, The strong and then the trembling hand, Rare days she wondered at her choice, Those fertile nights, the mastering voice, Nine sons and daughters whom she saw Become themselves by natural law; Debilitation, fading, death, Her husband’s last faint kiss and breath, Long years there living on alone, Spring cleanings of his house and stone, Tending blue stars and marigolds By Mary’s rose the dawn unfolds. Such sacraments of sky and flower Sustained her in her final hour, The doctor’s, then the pastor’s hand Upon her brow, the funeral planned, The simple coffin made of pine, The great King James’s thee and thine, The nineteenth psalm and twenty-third, Our Father and St. John’s The Word, Interment near her husband’s dust, And one still doing what he must, Her eldest son, who, now grown old, Plants blue star mixed with marigold In earth that covers the remains  Of one whose love his life contains, A soul with virtue deep imbued, Commandment and Beatitude, Spared late in this most graceless age That worships its own pride and rage Modernity’s depraved embrace, Fled far beyond this time, this place. ...

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