Widow. The bitter spider sits
21 lines✦
nd sits in the center of her loveless spokes.Death is the dress she wears, her hat and collar.The moth-face of her husband, moonwhite and ill,Circles her like a prey she’d love to kill A second time, to have him near again— A paper image to lay against her heart The way she laid his letters, till they grew warmAnd seemed to give her warmth, like a live skin.But it is she who is paper now, warmed by no one. Widow: that great, vacant estate! The voice of God is full of draftiness,Promising simply the hard stars, the spaceOf immortal blankness between stars And no bodies, singing like arrows up to heaven. Widow, the compassionate trees bend in, The trees of loneliness, the trees of mourning.They stand like shadows about the green landscapeOr even like black holes cut out of it. A widow resembles them, a shadow-thing, Hand folding hand, and nothing in between. A bodiless soul could pass another soul
✦