The Woman says
A plain, dark trees off at the edge, against the trees a little house and a big barn. A flat piece of land fenced in. Stubble, furrows. Horses waiting to get in at barn; cows standing around a pump. A tile yard, a water tank, one straight street of a little town. The country so still it seemed dead. The trees like–hopes that have been given up. The grave yards–on hills–they come so fast. I noticed them first because of my tombstone, but I got to thinking about the people–the people who spent their whole lives right near the places where they are now. There’s something in the thought of them–like the cows standing around the pump. So still, so patient, it–kind of hurts. And their pleasures: –a flat field fenced in. Your great words carried me to other great words. I thought of Lincoln, and what he said of a few of the dead. I said it over and over. I said things and didn’t know the meaning of them ’till after I had said them. I said–“The truth–the truth–the truth that opens from our lives as water opens from the rocks.” Then I knew what that truth was. “Let us here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” I mean–all of them. Let life become what it may become! –so beautiful that everything that is back of us is worth everything it cost.