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Then you sang ‘hey nonny, nonny, no’ and cried, And asked him to finish. ‘Quoth the potato-bug,’ He said, and stood up slowly. ‘By Shakespeare.’ And walked away. The Second Dream We all heard the alarm. The planes were out And coming, from a friendly country. You, I thought, Would know what to do. But you said, ‘There is nothing to do. Last time The bodies were like charred trees.’ We had so many minutes. The leaves Over the street left the light silver as dimes. The children hung around in slow motion, loud, Liquid as butterflies, with nothing to do. A Bride’s Hours 1. dawn I try to hold your face in my mind’s million eyes But nothing hangs together. My spirit lies Around my will like an extra skin I cannot fill or shake. My eyes in Bachrach’s rectangle look in. I, who was once at the core of the world, Whose childish outline held like a written word, Am frozen in blur: my body, waiting, pours Over its centaur dreams, and drowns, and wakes To terror of man and horse. dream barker 51 2. the bath My sisters walk around touching things, or loll On the bed with last month’s New Yorkers. My skin, Beaded with bath-oil, gleams like a hot-house fake: My body holds me like an empty bowl. It is three, it is four, it is time to come in From thinking about the cake to eat the cake. My sisters’ voices whir like cardboard birds On sticks: married, they flutter and wheel to find In this misted looking-glass their own lost words, In the exhaled smoke. There isn’t a sound, Even the shadows compose like waiting wings. I am the hollow circle closed by the ring. 3. night I am thrown open like a child’s damp hand In sleep. You turn your back in sleep, unmanned. How can I be so light, at the core of things? My way was long and crooked to your hand! What could your jeweled glove command But flight of my stone wings? Our honeymoon lake, ignoring the lit-up land, Shows blank Orion where to dip his hand. Afterbirth I loiter in the eye of the Slough, Every joint aching for sleep; The sky, inhumanly deep, Sarcastically casts back the Slough. Did my child take breath to cry At the slick hand that hooked her out, 52 door in the mountain ...

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