# The Pot of Earth/The Shallow Grass

PART TWO The Shallow Grass
The plow of tamarisk wood which is shared with black copper And drawn by a yoke of oxen all black Drags in the earth. The earth is made ready with copper, The earth is prepared for the seed by the feet of oxen That are shod with brass.
They said, Good Luck! Good Luck! What a handsome couple! Isn’t she lovely though! He can’t keep his hands Away from her. Ripe as a peach she is. Good Luck! Good-bye, Good-bye—
They took the down express, The five-five. She had the seat by the window— He can’t keep— She sat there looking out And the fields were brown and raw from the spring plowing, The fields were naked, they were stretched out bare, Rigid, with long welts, with open wounds, Stripped— In the flat sunlight she could see The fields heave against the furrows, lift, Twist to get free— —his hands— Why, what’s the matter? We’re almost there now, only half an hour. And we’ll have our supper in our rooms. I’ve taken
The best room, what they call the bridal chamber—
What they call—what do they call it?— And I dressed up All in these new things not a red ribbon You ever had on before and mind you keep The shoes you were married in and all to go Into a closed room with a bed in it, To lie in a shut chamber What they call— Something the chalked letters does he say That I wonder or what— She held his hand Against her breast under the flowers. She felt
The warmth of it like the warmth of the sun driving Downward into her heart. And all those fields Ready, the earth stretched out upon those fields Ready, and now the sowers—
What is this thing we know that they have not told us? What is this in us that has come to bed In a closed room?
I tell you the generations Of man are a ripple of thin fire burning Over a meadow, breeding out of itself Itself, a momentary incandescence Lasting a long time, and we that blaze Now, we are not the fire, for it leaves us.
I tell you we are the shape of a word in the air Uttered from silence behind us into silence Far, far beyond, and now between two strokes Of the word’s passing have become the word— That jars on through the night; and the stirred air Deadens, is still—
They lived that summer in a furnished flat On the south side of Congress Street and no Sun, but you could look into the branches Of all those chestnut-trees, and then they had A window-box, but the geraniums Died leaving a little earth and the wind Or somehow one June morning there was grass Sprouting—
How does your garden grow, your garden In the shallow dish, in the dark, how does it grow? To-morrow we bear the milk corn to the river, To-morrow we go to the spring with the pale stalks: Has your garden ripened? She used to water them Morning and evening and the blades grew Yellow a sort of whitey yellowy all Fluffy hairs from a dead skull they say The skulls of dead girls— Won’t it let you die Even, burgeoning from your bones, your dead Bones, from your body, not even die, not just Be dead, be quiet? What is this thing that sprouts
From the womb, from the living flesh, from the live body? What does it want? Why won’t it let you alone Not even dead? Why, look, you are a handful Of fat mould breeding corruption, a pinch Of earth for seed fall— How does your garden grow?
Hot nights the whole room reeked with the fetid smell Of chestnut flowers, the live smell, the fertile Odor of blossoms. She half drowsed. She dreamed Of long hair fragrant with almonds growing Out of her dead skull, she dreamed of one Buried, and out of her womb the corn growing.
Construe the soundless, slow Explosion of a summer cloud, decipher The sayings of the wind beneath the pantry door, Say when the moon will come, when the rain will follow.
Unless the rain comes soon the colored petals Sheathing the secret stigma of the rose Will fall, will wither, and the swollen womb Close, harden, upon a brittle stalk Seal up its summer, and the hollyhock, The broom, the furze, the poppy will become, Their petals fallen, all their petals fallen, Pease-cods—seedboxes—haws—
It should have rained when the moon Spilled out the old moon’s shadow.
Seven days I have been waiting for the rain now, The sound of water. Seven days I have been walking up and down in the house. There was nothing to do, there was nothing to do but wait, But wait, but walk and walk And at night hear The patter of dry leaves on the window and wake. And waking, think, The rain! Yes—and hear The patter of dry leaves. There was nothing to do, there was nothing to do but wait, But wait, but wait, but wait, and the wind whispering Something I couldn’t understand beneath the door,
Something that I wouldn’t understand. And the grass stems Stiffening to bear the headed grain, The rose, The hawthorn Covering with bony fingers Their swollen wombs, The summer shrivelling to husks, to shells, Pease-cods, seedboxes, The summer sucking through a withered straw Enough stale water for a few beans, For a handful of swelling peas in a sealed bladder, For the living something in a closed womb.
Upon the sand This brine, these bubbles— The wave of summer is drowned in the salt land.
And I, the climbing tip Of that old ivy, time, To waver swaying over a blind wall With all To-day to dream in, and, behind, The never-resting root Through my live body drives The living shoot, The climbing ivy-tip of time.
I am a room at the end of a long journey The windows of which open upon the night Or perhaps Nothing—
I am a room at a passage end where lies Huddled in darkness one that door by door
Has come time’s length through his old windy house For this— For what, then?
Neither.
I am a woman in a waterproof Walking beside the river in an autumn rain. Above the trolley bridge the market gardens Are charnel fields where the unburied corn Rots and the rattling pumpkin vines lift brittle fingers Warning—of what?—and livid, broken skulls Of cabbages gape putrid in a pond—
My face under the cold rain is cold As winter leaves that cover up the year.
I feel the wind as the numb earth feels it. I feel the heavy seed in the warm dark And the spring ripening—
And what is this to be a woman? Why, To be a woman, a sown field. Let us Attribute a significance perhaps Not ours to what we are compelled to be By being it: as privately forestall The seed’s necessity by welcoming The necessary seed; likewise prevent Death with the apothegm that all men die. Yes. And then wake alone at night and lie here
Stripped of my memories, without the chairs And walls and doors and windows that have been My recognition of myself, my soul’s Condition, the whole habit of my mind, Yes, wake, and of the close, unusual dark Demand an answer, crying, What am I? Ah, What! A naked body born to bear Nakedness suffering. A sealed mystery With hands to feed it, with unable legs, With shamed eyes meaning—what? What do they mean The red haws out there underneath the snow, What do they signify?
Glory of women to grow big and die Fruitfully, glory of women to be broken, Pierced by the green sprout, severed, tossed aside
Fruitfully— Yes, all right, Yes, Yes, But what about me— What am I— What do you think I am— What do you take me for!
Snow, the snow— When shall I be delivered? When will my time come?