I shall have Beauty underground.
Poppæa was once in my tumbrel, you see.
So were blithe Helen and white Iope

The chopping of the chocolate, the zesting of the orange,
the scalding of the milk,
the pouring of the cream, the folding-in,

I’ve inherited famine.
Taste, a gluttony: my mirrored crawl.
The women of my line dwell in fractions,

Cups and swords the prophet fed from, led with,
and an inlaid box with a hair from his holy beard,
all wrought with gold and strewn with jewels like fistfuls

Always already, the word within the world.
So the spider spins the same web each morning
and you are born into meaning

I’m laughing at her, that red-cheeked doll,
my storm-of-the-century. She is icicles!
I’m hoarding odd gallons, dreaming of fear.

          —A sunlit lot. Clear-cut.
                Slash smoulders. Crabs of a beer-
colored grass. A torn-up midden heap,

The traveling dissection tent is gone.
The stakes are pulled, the mason jars are cracked
and crusted with formaldehyde. The lawn

We look at each other and are sad.
There’s a pear tree beside you,
(in fact you’re surrounded by fruit trees—

Oh! was it in woman’s nature to hear him, and not to cherish
every word? It was Glenarvon—that spirit of evil whom she
beheld; her soul trembled within, and felt its danger.