Poem Beginning with Lines by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
But I could not hide
My quickening inner life from those at watch.
They saw a light at a window now and then,
They had not set there. Who had set it there?
Not me. I’m just a slug on the wet inner-face
of the discourse, chirpsing the wind;
I’ve no idea what drags the chair, bruises
the fruit, leads a child toward a dead rabbit
and bids them not weep, nor laugh, but sing.
My childhood neighbor recalled how I rode
my bike down the hill beside our house
and practiced my dying; arranging my body
in the bushes, lying still. All summer I did it,
repeating the drama, which is how a song
is made—you make a phrase and turn it
over and over like a dead rabbit, finding on
the other side, o look, this rabbit, dead too.
Source: Poetry (February 2020)