Josephine Miles

Through the branches of the Japanese cherry Blooming like a cloud which will rain A rain white as the sun The living room across the roadway Cuts its square of light And in it fight Two figures, hot, irate, Stuck between sink and sofa in that golden cage. Come out into the night, walk in the night, It is for you, not me. The cherry flowers will rain their rain as white Cool as the moon. Listen how they surround. You swing among them in your cage of light. Come out into the night.

Mother said to call her if the H-bomb exploded And I said I would, and it about did When Louis my brother robbed a service station And lay cursing on the oily cement in handcuffs. But by that time it was too late to tell Mother, She was too sick to worry the life out of her Over why why . Causation is sequence And everything is one thing after another. Besides, my other brother, Eddie, had got to be President, And you can't ask too much of one family. The chances were as good for a good future As bad for a bad one. Therefore it was surprising that, as we kept the newspapers from Mother, She died feeling responsible for a disaster unverified, Murmuring, in her sleep as it seemed, the ancient slogan Noblesse oblige.