Lorine Niedecker: Online Poems

I rose from marsh mud

I rose from marsh mud
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs

to see her wed in the rich
rich silence of the church,
the little white slave-girl
in her diamond fronds.

In aisle and arch
the satin secret collects.
United for life to serve
silver. Possessed.

Orig. published in New Directions in Prose & Poetry (the New Directions annual), volume 11 (1949), p. 302: Online Source

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