1.
She is the tinyhead;
she is silken with the hair from before birth;
her blood slugs—unfruit,

eye-leaves
of black velvet, she is griefless
and has no mirth. In nunnery-shadows

she shadows, does not hear
the supple foot, the white cotton
softing by. Soundless

she is;—her tongue does not understand
—milk-throttles
unlissomly.

2.
The pale wet pours
through no-time; somewhere a patch
of pain—in the mist

some dolorous thing:—choke-
eared, eye-
sere, do not know where this ends, other

is beginning.—Seems, a shifting now, then
—even into the dim
presses a sharpness;

a warmth,
insistent, this earth, this rind poor
of nerve pierces, almost.

3.
She was born on the street; her mother,
gleaner of dust,
has put away for always her ash-

baby: but her father comes
some evenings, walks with her in the courtyard
under a lazuli,

a cornflower sky.—There are small dust
filmy sons,
rustheads:—but for his girl, still, God-

filled, say the nuns,
he has bought tiny silvers, fits them
to the fragile bones.