"Back Home."
"The girl who used to sing in the choir
would have a slow shadow on dependable walls, I saw.
We walked summer nights.
Persons came nearer in those days,
both afraid but not able to know anything but a kind of, now.
"In the maples, an insect sang, insane for hours
about how deep the dark was.
Over the river, past the light on the bridge,
and then where the light quelled at limits in the park,
we left the town, the church lagging pretty far behind.
When I went back, I saw many sharp things--
the wild hills coming to drink at the river, the church
pondering its old meanings.
I believe the hills won.
I'm afraid the girl who used to sing in the choir
broke into jagged purple glass."
When I hear this hanging in the air after saying it, you know,
"broke into jagged purple glass," several feelings.
And one of them, of guilt, occurs to me, just the idea
that it might seem writing is done
by figuring out of something striking at the end.
I wouldn't like to think of it that way.
It happens, but it's not so satisfying as other things.
What I'm afraid of is, we'll seem
as if we're trying for certain local granulated effects.
That's what I'd like to try.