Classic Poem

The day being warm
She has brought her chair
Into the garden;
The sun on her hair
Makes yellow of white,
And even her shawl
Is transfigured with light,
She ignores the call
Of her daughter's children,
She ignores at her feet
The sinuous cat,
She ignores the heat,
And even the flowers—
Still and serene
As a dragonfly
That has crawled from its mail
As a snake that has sloughed
His skin, and green
Lies in green grass—so—satiate, frail,
The old woman, warmed through with sunshine, sits
And quietly there in the garden knits,
Knits herself gently back into life,
She who has nothing more to do
Being old but somehow newborn too
From the hands of pain, the dark midwife.