# THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY.

## I.

Here in my darkness
I lie in the roots of things,
As in a black wood whereof flowers and boughs are the roots,
And moist branching tendrils and ligaments,
Woven or spiralled or spreading, the roof of my head,
Blossomless, birdless, starless, skied with black earth,
A ponderous heaven.

But they forget,
Too often forget, and too soon, who above us
Brush the dead leaves from our mounds,
Scrape the moss from our names,
And feel safe,
They forget that one day our dense dome of earth becomes ether,
And the roots binding us loosen
As Peter's chains dropped for the Angel
In that old story they read there;
Forget — do they seek to remember?
That one day in the year we are with them,
Rejoin them, hear them, behold them, and walk the old ways with
them —
One.

Tomorrow...
And already I feel
The barisharms of ivy-roots loosening

3.

Are these apples in the wet grass, I wonder?
Sweet, sweet, sweet, the smell of the living.
And the far-off sky, and the stars,
And all the quiet space between,
So that one can float and fly...
Why used we only to walk?

This is the gate — and the latch still unmended.
Yet how often I told him... ah, the scent of my box-border.
And a late clove-pink still unfrozen.
It's what they call a "mild November"...
I knew that by the way the roots went on pushing,
But I'd forgotten how sweet it was on earth...
How quickly the dead forget.
And the living? No, I think, after all, they remember,
With everything about them so unchanged,
And no leaden loam on their eyes.
Yes, surely, I know he remembers;
Whenever he touches the broken latch,
He thinks: "How often she asked me,
And how careless I was not to mend it."
And smiles and sighs; then recalls
How we planted the box-border together,
Knee to knee in the wet, one November...
And the clove-pinks —
Here is the window.
They've put his lamp on the table,
Where the books are, heaped as of old —

4.

Ah, thank God for the old disorder.

How I used to hate it, and now —

How I could kiss the dust on the mirror, the pipe-ashes.

Over everything — all the old mess

That no strange hand interferes with unfeelingly...

Bless him for that.