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Ofthe drowned, where we will farm eat sleep and bear children Who dream of birds. Switch on your sea-lamp, then, And go downward, son, with your only message Echoing. Your message to the world, remember, Came to your father At Christmas like a bullet. When the great fish roll With you, herded deep in the deepest dance, When the shark cuts through your invisible Trail, I will send back That message, though nothing that lives Underwater will ever receive it. That does not matter, my gentle blond Son. That does not matter. Ah, this night this night mortality wails out Over Saint Joseph's this night and every over Mercy Mercy Mercy Manor. Who can be dressed right for the long cry? Who can have his tie knotted to suit the cinder Doctors' Parking Lot? 0 yes I'm walking and we go I go In into a whorehouse And convent rolled Into into something into the slant streets ofslum Atlanta. I've brought the House Mother A bottle ofgin. She goes for ice Rattling the kitchen somewhere over under The long cry. Fay hasn't come in Yet; she's scrubbing For Doctor Evans. Television bulks as the girls pass In, rising Up the stairs, and one says to me, What Say, Good Loking. Something wails like a held-down saint In Saint Joseph's. The kids, the Mother the House Mother says, all act like babies these days. Some ofthem are, I say In a low scream. Not all, she says, not all. You ever been a nurse? I ask. No; my husband was in wholesale furniture. 1\1ercy / 305 Passed away last year ofa kidney Disease; they couldn't do anything for him At all: he said you go and work With those girls who've been so good To me. And here I am, Good Looking. Fay ought to be Here in a little while. The girls that went up are coming Down, turning the leaves Ofthe sign-out book. You waiting for Fay? Yes. She'll be a little while. O.K. More ice, to ice-pack The gin. The last door opens. It is Fay. This night mortality wails out. Who died, My love? Whom could you not do anything for? Is that some stranger's Blood on your thigh? 0 love I know you by the lysol smell you give Vaseline. Died died On the table. She'll just be a minute. These are good girls, the Mother Says. Fay's a good girl. She's been married; her aunt's Keeping the kids. I reckon you know that, though. I do, And I say outside Oftime, there must be some way she can strip Blood off somebody's blood strip and comb down and out That long dark hair. She's overhead Naked she's streaming In the long cry she has her face in her hands In the shower, thinking ofchildren Her children in and out OfSaint Joseph's she is drying my eyes burn Like a towel and perfume and disinfectant battle In her armpits she is stamping On the ceiling to get her shoes to fit: Lord, Lord, where are you, Fay? 0 yes, you big cow-bodied Love 0 yes you have changed To black you are in deep Dark and your pale face rages With fatigue. Mother Mother House Mother ofMercy Manor, you can have the rest The Eye-Beaters) Blood) Victory) Madness) Buckhead and .Mercy / 306 Ofthe gin. The cinders ofthe parking lot are blazing all around Saint Joseph's; the doctors are leaving. Tum out the light as you go up To your husband's furniture, and come Here to me, you big Bosomed hard handed hard Working worker for Life, you. I'll give you something Good something like a long cry Out over the ashes ofcars something like a scream through hundreds ofbright Bolted-down windows. 0 take me into Your black. Without caring, care For me. Hold my head in your wide scrubbed Hands bring up My lips. I wail like all Saint Joseph's like mortality This night and I nearly am dead In love collapsed on the street struck down By my heart, with the wail Coming to me, borne in ambulances voice By voice into Saint Joseph's nearly dead On arrival on the table beyond All help: She would bend Over me like this sink down With me in her white dress Changing to black we sink...

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