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I Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, — Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now. II Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found, Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound, Until the purple blossom is trodden in the ground.

1. One girl of many. Hungry from her birth Half-fed. Half-clothed. Untaught of woman’s worth. In joyless girlhood working for her bread. At each small sorrow wishing she were dead, Yet gay at little pleasures. Sunlight seems Most bright & warm where it most seldom gleams. 2. One girl of many. Tawdry dress and old; And not enough beneath to bar the cold. The little that she had misspent because She had no knowledge of our nature’s laws. Thinking in ignorance that it was best To wear a stylish look, and -- bear the rest. 3. One girl of many. With a human heart. A woman’s too; with nerves that feel the smart Of each new pain as keenly as your own. The old ones, through long use, have softer grown. And yet in spite of use she holds the thought Of might-be joys more than, perhaps, she ought. 4. One girl of many. But the fault is here; Though she to all the others was so near; One difference there was, which made a change. No wrong thing, surely. Consequence most strange! Alike in birth. Alike in life’s rough way. She, through no evil, was more fair than they. 5. So came the offer, “Leave this story cold Where you may drudge and starve till you are old. Come! I will give you rest. And food. And fire. And fair apparel to your heart’s desire; Shelter. Protection. Kindness. Peace & Love. Has your life anything you hold above?” 6. And she had not . In all her daily sight There shone no vestige of the color White . She had seen nothing in her narrow life To make her venerate the title “Wife.” She knew no reason why the thing was wrong; And instinct grows debased in ages long. 7. All things that she had ever yet desired All dreams that her starved girlhood’s heart had fired All that life held of yet unknown delight Shone, to her ignorance, in colors bright. Shone near at hand and sure. If she had known ! But she was ignorant. She was alone. 8. And so she - sinned. I think we call it sin. And found that every step she took therein Made sinning easier and conscience weak. And there was never one who cared to speak A word to guide and warn her. If there were I fear such help were thrown away on her. 9. Only one girl of many. Of the street. In lowest depths. The story grows unmeet For wellbred ears. Sorrow and sin and shame Over and over till the blackened name Sank out of sight without a hand to save. Sin, shame, and sorrow. Sickness, & the grave. 10. Only one girl of many. Tis a need Of man’s existence to repeat the deed. Social necessity. Men cannot live Without what these disgraceful creatures give. Black shame. Dishonor. Misery & Sin. And men find needed health & life therein.

Mine was a Midwest home—you can keep your world. Plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code. We sang hymns in the house; the roof was near God. The light bulb that hung in the pantry made a wan light, but we could read by it the names of preserves— outside, the buffalo grass, and the wind in the night. A wildcat sprang at Grandpa on the Fourth of July when he was cutting plum bushes for fuel, before Indians pulled the West over the edge of the sky. To anyone who looked at us we said, “My friend”; liking the cut of a thought, we could say “Hello.” (But plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code.) The sun was over our town; it was like a blade. Kicking cottonwood leaves we ran toward storms. Wherever we looked the land would hold us up.

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

8 By now you know: I need the words. You'll learn to give me what I seek. It's my sick mind, it feeds on words. I'm begging you, for God's sake: speak! 17 Hurry, pin my wrists in place, nail me to your bed like Christ . . . comfort me, caress my face . . . fuck me when I expect it least. 45 From nerves veins valves ventricles from tendons cartilage nerves ducts from follicles nerves ribs clavicles . . . from every pore my soul erupts. 47 You liked that? you actually came? but how? Explain to me. But why? If you got off on that, you're doomed. A charge I can't and don't deny. 71 Why is even pleasure a kind of chore? Why is what sense I have left leaving me? Come on, explain. Who do you take me for, your personal doctor of philosophy?

At the end of my stepfather’s life when his anger was gone, and the saplings of his failed nursery had grown into trees, my newly feminist mother had him in the kitchen to pay for all those years he only did the carving. “You know where that is,” she would say as he looked for a knife to cut the cheese and a tray to serve it with, his apron wide as a dress above his workboots, confused as a girl. He is the one I think of now, lifting the tray for my family, the guests, until at last he comes to me. And I, no less confused, look down from his hurt eyes as if there were nothing between us except an arrangement of cheese, and not this bafflement, these almost tender hands that once swung hammers and drove machines and insisted that I learn to be a man.

There are who separate the eternal light In forms of man and woman, day and night; They cannot bear that God be essence quite. Existence is as deep a verity: Without the dual, where is unity? And the ‘I am’ cannot forbear to be; But from its primal nature forced to frame Mysteries, destinies of various name, Is forced to give what it has taught to claim. Thus love must answer to its own unrest; The bad commands us to expect the best, And hope of its own prospects is the test. And dost thou seek to find the one in two? Only upon the old can build the new; The symbol which you seek is found in you. The heart and mind, the wisdom and the will, The man and woman, must be severed still, And Christ must reconcile the good and ill. There are to whom each symbol is a mask; The life of love is a mysterious task; They want no answer, for they would not ask. A single thought transfuses every form; The sunny day is changed into the storm, For light is dark, hard soft, and cold is warm. One presence fills and floods the whole serene; Nothing can be, nothing has ever been, Except the one truth that creates the scene. Does the heart beat, — that is a seeming only; You cannot be alone, though you are lonely; The All is neutralized in the One only. You ask a faith, — they are content with faith; You ask to have, — but they reply, ‘IT hath.’ There is no end, and there need be no path. The day wears heavily, — why, then, ignore it; Peace is the soul’s desire, — such thoughts restore it; The truth thou art, — it needs not to implore it. The Presence all thy fancies supersedes, All that is done which thou wouldst seek in deeds, The wealth obliterates all seeming needs. Both these are true, and if they are at strife, The mystery bears the one name of Life, That, slowly spelled, will yet compose the strife. The men of old say, ‘Live twelve thousand years, And see the need of all that here appears, And Moxen* shall absorb thy smiles and tears.’ These later men say, ‘Live this little day. Believe that human nature is the way, And know both Son and Father while you pray; And one in two, in three, and none alone, Letting you know even as you are known, Shall make the you and me eternal parts of one.’ To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit Born of an ever-generating root; The other statement I cannot dispute. But say that Love and Life eternal seem, And if eternal ties be but a dream, What is the meaning of that self-same seem? Your nature craves Eternity for Truth; Eternity of Love is prayer of youth; How, without love, would have gone forth your truth? I do not think we are deceived to grow, But that the crudest fancy, slightest show, Covers some separate truth that we may know. In the one Truth, each separate fact is true; Eternally in one I many view, And destinies through destiny pursue. This is my tendency; but can I say That this my thought leads the true, only way? I only know it constant leads, and I obey. I only know one prayer — ‘Give me the truth, Give me that colored whiteness, ancient youth, Complex and simple, seen in joy and truth. Let me not by vain wishes bar my claim, Nor soothe my hunger by an empty name, Nor crucify the Son of man by hasty blame. But in the earth and fire, water and air, Live earnestly by turns without despair, Nor seek a home till home be every where!’

There are too many of us for you to believe you are either alone or responsible. No woman asks for this. Some are children. Some are boys. Every one of us should have been heard. This is for Anna, age 17, who was then beaten and left to die; for Nathan, who at 11 admired the basketball coach; for Rosaline, who sees in her baby the face of a rapist and who finds that face difficult to love; for sisters when soldiers came, mothers imprisoned among guards, for aunties grandmas daughters sons, for one who was tied and one who tried to scream, one whose husband watched, one violated time after time, one torn apart, who called the police who did not call her back, who went to the clinic where there were no kits, who numbed her shame with drugs, who could not drink enough to forget, who took her life, who believed she was an object, who said nothing, who knew no one was there and that no one would ever be there. Know this: there are so many that if we could speak, our voices might spread like floodwaters over their boots and swell past security stations; that if we cried out together we might finally understand it as an assault on all people, all creation, and maybe then there would be justice in this war to claim yourself, a struggle mapped all over the flesh of every woman or child who has known what it is to be used, as you were, your sacred body.

I don’t know when I stopped believing in heaven, or if I do. Maybe I just stopped receiving heaven. The sun rose. I climbed into the pines’ brittle crowns. You could say I was retrieving heaven. Not a place or a time, but blindness to everything but one light, pulsing, pleasing: heaven. We married in September. Everyone was still wearing their summer shirts, sleeves of heaven. It was white, there was a bend, and the car spun. It was then I prayed, pleading with heaven. When he goes limp,lie him down on thegurney, Mom. Oxygen mask, breathing heaven. The hospital shines, our son flies in and out. The snow falls hard, relieving heaven. He loves the colors of planets. I teach him their lifelessness: beautiful, deceiving heaven. I don’t know who is buried beneath me but I hear her break as I am leaving heaven. How can you cry for one ruined life, Maria, when you could be grieving for heaven?

The storm turns off the lights. The lightning lights the whereabouts of the flashlight. The flashlight takes us to matches and candles, the oil lamp. Now we’re back, revisiting the 19th century.