Say she was noble: a bright & foreign kind. Her long-gloved
hands, her smell of coins & salt. She had a way of staring over the
yokes of trees at you. Slim, in her woven skirt & church heels. All
that light hair twisting through a comb like speech. Now say the
railroad came & changed the whole county. Railroad came &
slithered over the mountains to where you can't catch. Tobacco in
the lungs, grease unfolding in the mouth. How, year by year, your
father's voice grew narrow & sweet with graves. Clifton, he called
you. Butler-William-Henry. Called you to the home-place where
God Himself slept like a spine in the earth. But say you kissed her,
once: a taste of glass. Say she muttered over you. Grandfather of
smoke, grandfather of great sorrow. Tell us what you gave for all
the stars drowned in her skin. For her womanish back of the neck,
tilting away.
