Except it didn't. It went underground
as some diseases have been known to do,
returning with a vengeance in our time.

Now. And now, a tiny foot, like
a shooting star, draws an arc
inside my belly.

At sunset the mill workers convene at the tavern
talking of their children and how they bathed them in a cistern.
One man compared the evening sunset to his boy's letter

I make this line
my beast
of claw of tooth

Who killed Cock Robin?
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
What’s in the cupboard?

He disappeared, often, even as he was speaking,
though he could finish those sentences
from which he had disengaged himself,

"Death is also the thief of beauty," he says,
as a slow disquietude replaces morning's calm.
The pink light fades from ashen clouds,

It has a bronze covering inlaid with silver,
originally gilt;
the sides are decorated with openwork zoomorphic

Gray flagstone steps, mean staggered discard graves
on which engravers botched a line or date,
or split the granite's flaw; a stream-cut groove's

Impatient at the ferry slip, he hoped
He'd long be out of Beaufort when they heard
The fool he'd been, the fools he'd made of them,