Eminent Victorians

    Half a day is dead already——

    a lady with a baby in the shady graveyard¹

    promenade² not quite the idea

    but the first idea to be impressed

    so firmly——Grace to be born

    in the

    bisected quadrangle

    stones propped³ insensible

    but all in relation

    to the babe.

    Babe what suckles

    babe what grows comfortable with thieves in a fertile

    bed of unsaid

    slice of eponymous

    grafted⁴ to the reef

    Hold my hand

    in the undergrowth

    waist high at your leisure cheerful

    child of melancholy⁵ and displeasure.

    Soft in the lap you grow

    hard at the breast——Oh

    under- and aboveground we go

    to relieve us. Camphor

    and cambric by the hand not by halves，

    one turn more

    will take us back to where we rest.

    Baby is not baby when she

    wears her oblong

    freshet

    I will take her home to rest.