“Query”
Mills College Year Book, Oakland, California, 1929
I listened when men spoke, and I could feel
Their voices slipping beneath my arms like wind.
I knew, in a dream more definite than steel,
The soft sibilant push of flesh and mind.
Seeing a bird's wing or a purple cloud,
I doubted when they talked of death and birth
As things that they could touch or say aloud,
Because I was not even sure of earth,
And feared to mention names of things unknown.
Sometime, somewhere, when everything is said
That can be said, I shall be left alone,
As still as lichen flattened on a stone.
Will there be fear and strangeness in that bed?
Or shall I know for certain I am dead?