Vegetation

With a few flowers that were small and all

So nicely cut from no one's throat

She potted consciousness herself

On a prettier table than most tables

With a red floor. Nor fussed at waiting.

Like any year another year would spring

The silent clay to really social spurge,

Hyacinth, speedwell-what have you.

And so if up the hill where draglines bit,

Or where mills groaned, men fought in knots

And almost organized human relationships

PREDERICK BOCK

-Here her head would nod her way was best-

But seemed always just terribly dithered

As if some great bloodthirsty sky-

Darkening Lord were passing by,

Did window shiver or door budge her face

Around? No, winter kept a perfect pergola

Of steam and hiccuped sighs (that skull

In the bay-window fern, you know) whatever

She happened to hear on the party-line.

(Her hair, indeed, at times stood nearly straight

As villainous wires swore uplift of souls.)

None of that for her-bombings, garrotings,

Band-music, parades. No, after tea,

And a bit of bugging herself, she aimed

A wobbling spray at rows of faience crocks

Or cut up screaming headlines into pads

For certain terra cotta pots . . . and somewhat

Vulpine-twinkling porcelain sofa-sewers.

And should His Lounging Majesty spook out

Only more low sighs-to far-off booming

Cheers and jeers from revilers and encivilers-

What of it? Weren't they, if you please,

As almost organizers more fainéant?

Besides-picric, fuzzy, unaware

Of Himself in town unclenched and free-

How was He to judge the depth of her siege,

A state of servile hope so unconsoled

And apt to come to nothing that she wondered

If victory lay, perhaps, in torpid bowls,

Mugs, jugs-rather than flowers? For oh

It's hard to live nowhere and know nothing!

But she kept on. And-right where the Word

Explodes-who can say what most matters?

For on the day she felt air's finger trace

Jonquils, or such-first one-then two, little

Sweethearts-tulips, maybe-in lower case:

How the sun thumbed from every jardiniére a nose!