Can we believe—by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street,

Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…

Weed, moss—weed, root tangled in sand, sea—iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken,

The light passes from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower— the hepaticas, wide—spread under the light

From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,

The mysteries remain, I keep the same cycle of seed—time and of sun and rain; Demeter in the grass,

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure

O be swift— we have always known you wanted us… We fled inland with our flocks. we pastured them in hollows, cut off from the wind

YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down