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The tombstone told me when she died

Her two surnames stopped me still

A virgin married at rest

She married in this pouring place

That I struck one day by luck

Before I heard in my mother's side

Or saw in the looking glass-shell

the rain through her cold heart speak

And the sun killed in her face

More the thick stone cannot tell

Before she lay on a stranger's bed

With a hand plunged through her hair

Or that rainy tongue beat back

Through the devilish years and innocent deaths

To the room of a secret child

Among men later i heard it said

She cried her white-dressed limbs were bare

And her red lips were kissed black

She wept in her pain and made mouths

Talked and tore through her eyes smiled

She said:

I have longed to move away, but am afraid

Some life, yet unspent

Might explode out of the old lie

Burning on the ground and crackling into the air

Leave me half-blind neither by night

Ancient fear, the parting of that from hair

Pursed lips, at the receiver, Shall I fall

to death's feather. By these I would not

care to die