In memory Long summer shadows calm the grass, Each figure a finger. Which ones are pointing to the past, Which to the future?

The tiny grey grandmother Loosens an immense shadow. We shiver in it, but for her It’s a pontoon to the handsome fellow

She married - when was it They honeymooned in the Philippines? Teddy Roosevelt was President, And he’d sent the Marines

To educate the Filipinos - God Advancing with his stick. And grandfather was Christian-good, But he came home sick,

And then the baby died; then money-troubles, Syphilis and silence as he sank Like silt into the tissue-papered culls Of her steamer trunk.

How it hunches there, an anchored hulk In the surf of her candlewick bedcover In the bride-white room we had to visit, With its incense of Bible-leather,

Moth balls and sweet unappeasable hurt.

ANNE STEVENSON