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430 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.

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.

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.

I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid, Perfume and youth course through me, and I am
 * their wake.

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.

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.

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