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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

[When the wound has grown shallow]

[When the wound has grown shallow]

(Prose-Poem)

When the wound has grown shallow, her face almost forgotten; the sight of a turning face on the street brings the sparking jolt, the old tremulous warmth. But the mind changes, the compass-needle no less true moves with its wandering magnetic north; the brain changes, coarsened by drugs or sharpened by muscular content; the body changes from adolescent gaucheness to animal pride, the blood heavy, the flesh-clad skeleton.

He who rides in the rain on a sodden hillside will feel the rough community riveting man and beast; will find memory and expectation branches of the same tree. From the plough-handles assurance jolts: our fathers, feeling thepage 12 snow-wind cool on their faces, the steady horses straining, the furrow falling and crumbled underfoot; seeing the immense cloudbergs move over on blue, and the horizoned earth revolve, what could they say but: For this we were made. Thus their loving was secure as seasons, could grow almost to green the wilderness of relinquished Eden.

. . . the sea iron-dust fog; sharp white breakers leap out like signal-flashes. Where the slant light crosses from day’s ruin, feathery grass is lit, and dark- green gorse expectant of what annunciation. Though no visible rain, the bow hangs over, a broken covenant. For green boughs have lied to us: the deluge of fear and iron is perpetual.

1945 (11)