Gone now the baby's nurse, <br />a lioness who ruled the roost <br />and made the Mother cry. <br />She used to tie <br />gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze- <br />three months they hung like soggy toast <br />on our eight foot magnolia tree, <br />and helped the English sparrows <br />weather a Boston winter. <br /> <br />Three months, three months! <br />Is Richard now himself again? <br />Dimpled with exaltation, <br />my daughter holds her levee in the tub. <br />Our noses rub, <br />each of us pats a stringy lock of hair- <br />they tell me nothing's gone. <br />Though I am forty-one, <br />not forty now, the time I put away <br />was child's play. After thirteen weeks <br />my child still dabs her cheeks <br />to start me shaving. When <br />we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy, <br />she changes to a boy, <br />and floats my shaving brush <br />and washcloth in the flush.... <br />Dearest I cannot loiter here <br />in lather like a polar bear. <br /> <br />Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil. <br />Three stories down below, <br />a choreman tends our coffin's length of soil, <br />and seven horizontal tulips blow. <br />Just twelve months ago, <br />these flowers were pedigreed <br />imported Dutchmen; no no one need <br />distinguish them from weed. <br />Bushed by the late spring snow, <br />they cannot meet <br />another year's snowballing enervation. <br /> <br />I keep no rank nor station. <br />Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.<br /><br />Robert Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/home-after-three-months-away/
