Life stood on the top stair a moment
Waved her last gray slander down the stair,
I will not forget her absent eyes
Her other smile like one rose
Falling, falling everywhere

As I waywardly hesitated
With upward fingers and turned lips out,
Dismissed, tossed to always a twilight
Amid stuttering houses, tilted faces
And I said, If roundabout
Into the stark portrait of a mood
I weave a bolder composition
Lines of forward conversation, pencilled brows,
Two of my streaks of vanished blood
For mouth and hair,

Why, then I said, Life like a found star
Burning here usually and there,
Will return and pose once more
Where she stopped once with stricken eyes
Bitterly, then closed an iron door.