Death, that struck me
when I was most confiding.

His sad brown bulk rears
— patient as the hills.

I did not live until this time:
little my lacking fortunes show.

My daddy come home this morning;
now I am slow and placed, fond of sun.

One day, not here, you will find a hand,
but not for long in the overheated house.

Sometimes, the light young man has to die.
What words? when I am dead, my dearest.

. . . . . . .

Cento by Susan Powers Bourne
Drawn from Index of First Lines in
The World Split Open: Four Centuries
of Women Poets in England and America,
1552 -1950, ed. Louise Burkinow, 1974.