Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,
   When hours were long and days sufficed to hold
    Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled
By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage
Of undone duties, modern heritage,
    Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold
    Thy presence from this over-busy world,
And bearing silence with thee disengage
    Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods
    Alone can cherish thee, alone possess
Thy quiet, teeming vigor. This our crime:
    Not to have worshipped, marred by alien moods
    That sole condition of all loveliness,
The dreaming lapse of slow, unmeasured time.

I wander among the hills of alien lands
   Where Nature her prerogative resigns
To Man; where Comfort in her shack reclines
   And all the arts and sciences commands.
      But in my soul
      The eastern billows roll—
I hear the voices of my native strands.

My lingering eyes, a lonely hemlock fills
   With grace and splendor rising manifold;
Beneath her boughs the maples spread their gold
   And at her feet, the silver of rills.
      But in my heart
      A peasant void of art
Echoes the voices of my native hills.

On every height a studied art confines
   All human joy in social pulchritude;
The boxwood frowns where beckoning birches stood,
   And where the thrushes caroled Fashion dines.
      But through the spreading cheer
      The shepherd’s reed I hear
Beneath my Lebanon terebinths and pines.

And though no voices here are heard of toil,
   Nor accents least of sorrow, nor the din
Of multitudes, nor even at the Inn
   The City is permitted aught to spoil,
      Yet in my breast,
       A shack at best,
Laments the mother of my native soil.

Even where the sumptuous solitudes deny
   A shelter to a bird or butterfly,
As in the humblest dwelling of the dale
   A gracious welcome’s shown the passer-by;
       But evermore clear
       Allwhere I hear
The calling of my native hut and sky.

Land of my birth! a handful of thy sod
   Resuscitates the flower of my faith;
For whatsoever the seer of science sayth,
   Thou art the cradle and the tomb of God;
      And forever I behold
      A vision old
Of Beauty weeping where He once hath trod.

that winter it was so cold
I had nowhere to go but inside

my heart was a clock on the kitchen wall
and I tacked up curtains to keep

anyone from looking in on my liver
up river  snow kept coming

and the aching thing ached still
husband it was yours for the taking

I clanged pots against my radiator thighs
duct-taped my mouth  all the doors

if only we could lose the hour
if only we could witness a single bloom

listen  if spring ever comes
I will open these windows to you

and beat this old rug of a soul clean
the house will be pristine

and I will be your wife again