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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Genevieve Taggard

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Drouth

Genevieve Taggard

From “The Way Things Go”

YOU cannot persuade us to stand lovely and unseasonal,

Perpetual spring and perpetual winter

Forever drifting petals across the picture of your existence.

Frames we can never be for the miniature of your days;

Nor can we decorate your sky

With a single branch of us chosen for the dashed loveliness you prefer.

Nor can we die, petal by petal by petal,

Across thirty years, as you would have us,

Decorating by our death

The design of your days.