HARRIET
1.
Half a year, then a year and a half, then
ten and a half - the pathos of a child's fractions turn-
ing up each summer. God a seaslug, God a queen
with forty servants, God . . . she gave up - things whirl
in the chainsaw bite of whatever squares
the universe by name and number. For
the hundredth time, I slice through fog, and round
the village with my headlights on the ground,
as if I were the first philosopher,
as if I were trying to pick up a car
key - - - It can't be here, and so it must be there
behind the next crook in the road or growth
of fog - there blinded by our feeble beams,
a face, clock-white, still friendly to the earth.
----
Robert Lowell
_Notebook, 1967-68_
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
[This was the first version. In a subsequent volume, _History_, the
poem was altered slightly.]
----
RD
ELEMENOPE Productions
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