I.

All my life I have gone to church

with a kind of persistence.

I wanted one work of mine

to be as fresh as this world and more

spacious than my consideration of it.

I was not out to burn up

my life for a mystery;

my daily experience was acknowledged

in my belief, in its reticence.

Its reserve exceeds me in every way.

II.

When at the end of all pioneering,

I will think, how glad He will be

to hear how his pupils’ memories

accord with his own.

But it was only the first winter,

and in truth I was dreaming of

the home I’d just left and of when

father’s library would arrive here.

4. Bride’s Dessert

A form of counsel

1. Peel 4–6 oranges. Slice into very thin rounds.

2. Arrange onto plate (a glass one is traditional).

3. Sprinkle with bourbon or brandy and let sit in the refrigerator for 2 hours. The important thing is to get the oranges very cold.

4. Before serving, sprinkle with a little shredded coconut and garnish with a maraschino cherry, and/or violets.

Serves 4.

Also called “Orange Ambrosia.”

5. Conversion Narrative

What I was trying to tell you about my burning house—

Now that I am dead, I can tell you.

It is only as nothing that the soul

can be larger than what I imagine.

When she saw the house on fire

my youngest daughter said,

When I grow up, I want to be lightning.

Suffering must have quite a different dimension

from what I have experienced so far.

The weight of flame in our faces

increased the parade ground of our mystery.

It said the surprise is on its way.

6. Séance

I had time and liberty enough

to propose a great many things to myself;

and now you raise me up again,

to show you a public belief

realized in private,

an idea of art and of mortal life

In the mornings the Lord did say, Get up and be birdlike

and I would consent once more

to live within this peculiar dream

—my soul correcting by inches, holding itself out

to the world that will not quite hold it—

and even in my sleep, I would keep track of the time,

though you see, the world was always saying to die, actually—

Discovering my privacy was like coming upon blindness—

I clean the blackened oven,

I tend my garden, I read, I teach the children

parables, they draw pictures

It is not a small life

I am not haunted

by nature, not even by the vast stretches of silence in it,

something else is melting

the days:

thawing them to a dazzling supernatural—

there, human nature is flowering,

is saying to think more coldly

bewilderment free on the surface of such an expanse

—these baby birds stunned by

their wings,

now they can see clouds not in any book

7. Poetry (The Author to Her Book)

It’s the thing I choose,

a nice bed in the hospital