Told to put a light in my lamp,
I turned from a daughter’s work
to take a tabular rock in hand
then struck as hail would strike,
as a man who has grown sick
of his wife will scrape and grind
as if he no longer hells infants
world-ward in their blood-rush,
hollowing a cup to hold the oil
I would otherwise have swallowed:
I trust in nothing near, hungering
for the light of the leaf as it unfurls,
tending what I can, beguiling none.
I tangled my neck in tresses, cutting
the necks from my dresses, snarling
what I knew, what I know I learned
down through my dirt floor. I could
have burned the smear of bear tallow
I once felt forced to eat on an arm
of the sea whose waves but wrought
their white across and up into wind
when what should harbor winter
now darkens down to parch.
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