Читать книгу Door in the Mountain - Jean Valentine - Страница 105

CambridgeApril 27, 1957

Your letter made me see myself grown old

With only the past's poor wing-dust shadows to hold,

Dressed in violet hand-me-downs, half-asleep, only half,

Queer as nines in the violet dust of my mind,

Leaning in some sloping attic, like this one where I write

You all night,

The wet, metaphorical Cambridge wind

Sorry on the skylight.

The New England landscape goes

Like money: but here on Agassiz Walk we save

Everything we have

Under Great-Aunt Georgie's georgian bed;

A knot garden roots through Great-Aunt Georgie's toes

Three floors below: when summer comes, God knows

We'll dry the herbs Aunt Georgie grows:

Who knows, who knows

What goes on in her head.

I read Thoreau myself, I listen for Thoreau

Up here; wonder if there's a burial mound

Anywhere for Henry: PAX, AETAT.

45. Quiet Desperation. REQUIESCAT,

Ducky: one of these nice days

My niece, the one with one glass eye,

Is driving me out to Walden Pond:

Cross my heart, I hope to die.