Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you and stay — I will not chafe you,

I feel ashamed to go naked about the world.

23. I am curious to know where my feet stand — and what this is flooding me, childhood or manhood — and the hunger that crosses the bridge between.

24. The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,

Laps life-swelling yolks — laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just ripened ;

The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,

And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the best liquor afterward.

25. I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid.

Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.

26. It is my face yellow and wrinkled, instead of the old woman's,

I sit low in a straw-bottom chair, and carefully darn my grandson's stockings.

27. It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,

I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.

28. A shroud I see, and I am the shroud — I wrap a body and lie in the coffin.