"Tess"

And as being sadly tall among the misty swedes & turnips
     she goes to the summit where weeds
spill over an abbey wall, like spidery froth pulled to right or
    left in the breeze,

and she sloshes through the mud (to right or left)and is taken
   for an elegant heron in heels,
revelatory without a cause & groundbreaking without a sigh,
   and rises like an early apple blooth,

like the most expert bird in the world, & hides in the withy bed
   and avoids every lure imaginable—
Tess the sexless, spotless in one last desperate plea for seed
   And as the nature of things is mean,

(certainly as regards the cliffs, milk-thistles and finches)
   and she goes angrily but with determination,
blindly but with angels, and as sins of the young shine in streams,
   like hontish stars, and lovers

thrash in the wind, like Tess and her angel, and grieve as if
   the skies can squint and glane at them both
& could even melt her down to the shadow of a ring,
   shame-faced girl, in her best boots

who looks away from insane abbey walls, veiled, just loved
   and lost again in the woods
And as singing her thresher's song she runs and runs again,
   til the rains finally fill her

and a four-poster at home, with mistle-toe, can't still the winds,
   slipping in through the cracks
and the figure of a finch, playing at his harp, awaits outside
   and Tess's taken from her stone...