Her heart is not parti-colored. She’ll not go steeping Her gentle hands in the pulp and the dead black waters Till the crooked blot lies there like a devil’s shadow, And the heart is stained with the stain.

If I came to the bed where you lay sick and in fever, I would not come with little tight-fisted flowers But with the white heron’s plume that lay in the forest Till it was cooler than sleep.

The living balm would touch on your wound less gently, The Georgia sun less fierce than my arms to hold you, The steel bow less stubborn than my curved body Strung against august death.

They hurt you, darling, they hurt you and I not with you, I nowhere there to slit the cloth from your burning, To find the head of the man who fired the bullet And give his eyes to the crows.