Groves of Defeat

Her starvations were an inchoate expression

Of her body; she hungered for she knew not what.

It was governed by her experience, and set up

Her need. I could not speak to her as wisdom does

With the gamut of the years. We had followed

Different destinies, and had been warped

With different drouths and fired with suns

Now unremembered. Her hands were cooled

Because the frozen members of her thought

Were incapable of contact. She had been conditioned

By the transfusion of blood, and found

No other human substitute was satisfactory.

It was unkind that she had been mortified

Of mythologies. Her parents had crippled

Her limbs with exactions of turpitude;

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She could not free the train of her belief

From the mysteries of childhood. Her growth

Was arrested with sorrow, and she mourned

Like a paralytic in the groves of defeat.