Lucía M. Polis The Poetry of

This poem appears in The Love of a Good Man.

Ho! I have slipped the tender touch of sky
And ploughed the earth with labour-callused hands;
Deeper I dug in, trying to unply,
Awake from hist'ry—made a hundred plans
I could not hope for—stood and sat and lay
Low in the failing daylight. Watching him,
I've hiked up Helicon and back, asplay,
My eager eyes composing heady hymns…

Down, down the brief and dreamy, kind beyond
I've filtered through our glass of carnal crime
Where ne'er one of my kind erstwhile had gone—
And, while I wandered with no map or plan
The low, oft-trespassed wickedness of time,
Forsook all gods, and touched the face of man.