That is my only virtue as I see it, Ability to wait and hold my own And keep my own resolves once they are made In spite of what the smarter people say. I can’t be smart the way that they are smart. I’ve known that since I was an ugly child. It teaches you⁠—to be an ugly child. It teaches you⁠—to lose a thing you love. It sticks your roots down into Sangamon ground And makes you grow when you don’t want to grow And makes you tough enough to wait life out, Wait like the fields, under the rain and snow.

I have not thought for years of that lost grave That was my first hard lesson in the queer Thing between men and women we call love. But when I think of it, and when I hear The rain and snow fall on it, as they must, It fills me with unutterable grief.