“Folded in the doeskin sashes of her lap,
Paused before the little war begins.
This one will be guttural, this war.
How is it possible to still be startled
As I am by the oblong silhouette of the coiling
Index finger of a pending death.
No longer will
Wooing be the wondrous
Thing, instead, a homely domesticity, constant
As a field of early rye and yarrow-light.”
What one is fit to stand is not what one is Given, necessarily, and not this night.