Waking the Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep

    But with the sentence：

    "Use your failures for paper."

    Meaning， I understood，

    the backs of failed poems， but also my life.

    Whose far side I begin now to enter—

    A book imprinted¹ without seeming season，

    each blank day bearing on its reverse， in random² order，

    the mad-set type of another.

    December 12， 1960. April 4， 1981. 13th of August， 1974—

    Certain words bleed through to the unwritten pages.

    To call this memory offers no solace³.

    "Even in sleep， the heavy millstones turning."

    I do not know where the words come from，

    what the millstones，

    where the turning may lead.

    I， a woman forty-five， beginning to gray at the temples，

    putting pages of ruined paper

    into a basket， pulling them out again.