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My twentieth birthday lean as glass

spring vacation I stayed in the college town

twanging misery’s electric banjo offkey.

I wanted to inject love right into the veins

of my thigh and wake up visible:

to vibrate color

like the minerals in stones under black light.

My best friend went home without loaning me money.

Hunger was all of the time the taste of my mouth.

Now I am ripened and sag a little from my spine.

More than most I have been the same ragged self

in all colors of luck dripping and dry,

yet love has nested in me and gradually eaten

those sense organs I used to feel with.

I have eaten my hunger soft and my ghost grows stronger.

Gradually, I am turning to chalk,

to humus, to pages and pages of paper,

to fine silver wire like something a violin

could be strung with, or somebody garroted,

or current run through: silver truly,

this hair, shiny and purposeful as forceps

if I knew how to use it.

The Greatest Love

ANNA SWIR

She is sixty. She lives

the greatest love of her life.

She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,

her hair streams in the wind.

Her dear one says:

“You have hair like pearls.”

Her children say:

“Old fool.”

Time

MARY URSULA BETHELL

“Established” is a good word, much used in garden books,

“The plant, when established” . . .

Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden!

For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive—

Those that come after me will gather these roses,

And watch, as I do now, the white wistaria

Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.

Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,

Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder

At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,

And say, “One might build here, the view is glorious;

This must have been a pretty garden once.”

Going Blind

RAINER MARIA RILKE

She sat at tea just like the others. First

I merely had a notion that this guest

Held up her cup not quite like all the rest.

And once she gave a smile. It almost hurt.

When they arose at last, with talk and laughter,

And ambled slowly and as chance dictated

Through many rooms, their voices animated,

I saw her seek the noise and follow after,

Held in like one who in a little bit

Would have to sing where many people listened;

Her lighted eyes, which spoke of gladness, glistened

With outward luster, as a pond is lit.

She followed slowly, and it took much trying,

As though some obstacle still barred her stride;

And yet as if she on the farther side

Might not be walking any more, but flying.

Old Woman

ELIZABETH JENNINGS

So much she caused she cannot now account for

As she stands watching day return, the cool

Walls of the house moving towards the sun.

She puts some flowers in a vase and thinks

“There is not much I can arrange

In here and now, but flowers are suppliant

As children never were. And love is now

A flicker of memory, my body is

My own entirely. When I lie at night

I gather nothing now into my arms,

No child or man, and where I live

Is what remains when men and children go.”

Yet she owns more than residue of lives

That she has marked and altered. See how she

Warns time from too much touching her possessions

By keeping flowers fed, by polishing

Her fine old silver. Gratefully

She sees her own glance printed on grandchildren.

Drawing the curtains back and opening windows

Every morning now, she feels her years

Grow less and less. Time puts no burden on

Her now she does not need to measure it.

It is acceptance she arranges

And her own life she places in the vase.

Let It Be Forgotten

SARA TEASDALE

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long-forgotten snow.

Courage

ANNE SEXTON

It is in the small things we see it.

The child’s first step,

as awesome as an earthquake.