The Collected Poems

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air

of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Entering the tower of my fears,

I shut my doors on that dark guilt,

I bolt the door, each door I bolt.

Condemned by our ancestral fault,

summer’s reeds are all engraved in ice

as is your image in my eye; dry frost

glazes the window of my hurt; what solace

can be struck from rock to make heart’s waste

grow green again? Who’d walk in this bleak place?

Through fen and farmland walking
With my own country love
I saw slow flocked cows move
White hulks on their day’s cruising;
Sweet grass sprang for their grazing.
The air was bright for looking:
Most far in blue, aloft,
Clouds steered a burnished drift;
Larks’ nip and tuck arising
Came in for my love’s praising.