5
" That was the first growth,
the heir of all my minutes,
the victim of every ramification-
more and more it grew green, and gave too much shelter.
And now at my homecoming,
the barked elms stand up like sticks along the street.
I am a foot taller than when I left,
and cannot see the dirt at my feet.
Yet sometimes I catch my vague mind
circling with a glazed eye
for a name without a face, or a face without a name,
and at every step,
I startle them. They start up,
dog-eared, bald as baby birds. "
― Robert Lowell , For the Union Dead