Shook early dandelions, and tossed a bird
That left a branch with song--
I saw you totter over a ravine!

What were you at the start?
What soul dissatisfaction, sense of wrong,
Of being thwarted, stung you?
What was your shrinking of the flesh;
What fear of being soiled, misunderstood,
What wrath for loneliness which constant hope
Saw turned to fine companionship;
What in your marriage, what in seeing me,
The fruit of marriage, recreated traits
Of face or spirit which you loathed;
What in your father and your mother,
And in the chromosomes from which you grew,
By what mitosis could result at last
In you, in issues of such moment,
In our dissevered beings,
In what the world will take from me
In children, in events?
All quiet now, no March days with you now,
Only the soft coals slumbering in your face,
I saw you totter over a ravine,
And back of you the Furies!




JOHNNY APPLESEED