Author: Jane Kenyon

Christ has been done to death In the cold reaches of northern Europe A thousand thousand times. Suddenly bread And […]

There’s just no accounting for happiness, Or the way it turns up like a prodigal Who comes back to the […]

The dog has cleaned his bowl And his reward is a biscuit, Which I put in his mouth Like a […]

Now wind torments the field, Turning the white surface back On itself, back and back on itself, Like an animal […]

I scrub the long floorboards In the kitchen, repeating The motions of other women Who have lived in this house. […]

I am the blossom pressed in a book, Found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the […]

All day the blanket snapped and swelled On the line, roused by a hot spring wind…. From there it witnessed […]

Yes, long shadows go out From the bales; and yes, the soul Must part from the body: What else could […]

I got out of bed On two strong legs. It might have been Otherwise. I ate Cereal, sweet Milk, ripe, […]

1FROM THE NURSERY When I was born, you waited Behind a pile of linen in the nursery, And when we […]

We lie back to back. Curtains Lift and fall, Like the chest of someone sleeping. Wind moves the leaves of […]

I divested myself of despair And fear when I came here. Now there is no more catching One’s own eye […]

Like primitives we buried the cat With his bowl. Bare-handed We scraped sand and gravel Back into the hole. They […]

Let the light of late afternoon Shine through chinks in the barn, moving Up the bales as the sun moves […]