Leaflet on Wooing

Wanting is reposed and plump   
As the hands of a Romanov child

Folded in the doeskin sashes of her lap,   
Paused before the little war begins.

            This one will be guttural, this war.   
How is it possible to still be startled

As I am by the oblong silhouette of the coiling   
Index finger of a pending death.

No longer will
                        Wooing be the wondrous

Thing; instead, a homely domesticity, constant   
As a field of early rye and yarrow-light.

What one is fit to stand is not what one is   
Given, necessarily, and not this night.