ii.

You hold me over the gaping wound

out from the earth, and threaten the soil.

“Wouldn’t I swallow it all?”

“No, no.”

“But wouldn’t it enter where it ought to not go?”

“Of course not, of course.”

You lower me gently- “this is the difference, you know,

between being buried and planted,”

and I say “of course”, but I don’t.