Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire

And I walked, I walked through the light air; I moved with the morning.

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.

I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.