Eminent Victorians

　　by Rebecca Wolff

　　Half a day is dead already——

　　a lady with a baby in the shady graveyard

　　promenade not quite the idea

　　but the first idea to be impressed

　　so firmly——Grace to be born

　　in the

　　bisected quadrangle

　　stones propped insensible

　　but all in relation

　　to the babe.

　　Babe what suckles

　　babe what grows comfortable with thieves in a fertile

　　bed of unsaid

　　slice of eponymous

　　grafted to the reef

　　Hold my hand

　　in the undergrowth

　　waist high at your leisure cheerful

　　child of melancholy and displeasure.

　　Soft in the lap you grow

　　hard at the breast——Oh

　　under- and aboveground we go

　　to relieve us. Camphor

　　and cambric by the hand not by halves，

　　one turn more

　　will take us back to where we rest.

　　Baby is not baby when she

　　wears her oblong

　　freshet

　　I will take her home to rest.