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TAURUS
I
can be assured to find her most days
in
one of those great inert apple-bough chairs
in
her largest room, knotting and knotting the yarn
of
the sleave of care with hard horn needles.
Nods
me into my place, a smile, the intrusion
of
chin into that sluggishly handsome neck of hers.
I
wait her time, take tips on how to repose
from
her obstinate curios, the trivet, the copper cans,
the
naked hessian curtains, the honesty leaves.
Wait
till she’s up, jaunting her matron’s behind
into
the kitchen, or to the window embrasure
where
she’ll remark her garden. The
hawthorn’s out.
She
actually pruned them, hawthorns! She
will
ask
of all things she owns that they be
hewn
or pruned. The air in the
room fits
as
into sprocket holes, and visitors, too.
I
am not afraid to enter. I shall be possessed
without
being bossed, specimened, curtailed.
My
tastes won’t suffer—be dazed, perhaps,
by
all the incautious decor, but regaled too;
and
after plump fare rest heavy with the lees.
I
would be angry if haste, rampant here,
dug
the air all ways with raffish chatter.
She
is a biddable woman, I let her bide then,
talking
of her sons, gone, revealing no malice
to
the fixed earth which has interred them
with
its residuum of lighter tares.
And
she will talk so when I have gone
of
me, convinced by her they were conserved.
Alan
Marshfield
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