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by Fred Chappell
Oh when she's there she's so immensely there
No color but her own, no voice but hers,
No other nature can advance itself;
She is the noontime that absorbs the day-moon.
Large in every sense, rich, overblown,
Rose that droops from surfeit of itself;
Bright flowing dresses brave as carnival bunting:
All Marjorie's grand Everything is here.
The dimpled hands, the sensual smile, the stare
That takes you in as warmly as a perfume,
All sympathy and calm attentiveness:
So much herself it seems she has no self
But only Presence that if taken away
Would cause such lessening of the sense of place
You'd think the room was now no more itself
But only a diminished facsimile:
A room wherein a chamber symphony
Played Schubert for an hour and then removed,
The chairs left emptier than before they came.
So much herself she is wild Selflessness,
Has no more concept of a Marjorie
Than has a waterfall, a sun-baked stone,
The dew-strung spiderweb, the snuffling spaniel,
The rain-wet sycamore spread-armed in City Park.
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