They call at Cumberland Street bringing pictures or tusks,

To go with the tusks, pictures, shells, and porcelain,

And she accepts them, and keeps them, most of them,

Among the alligators, crabs, mice, our ancestors.

She has prints by Blake, the snapshots, a painting by e e

cummings, coins, and ivory tigers. But it is impossible

To bring her a poem not only for her but about her.

To mean well does not excuse an embarrassment, and

I mean well, with a hand that can grasp, eyes that dilate.

She inscribed the photograph: By George Platt Lynes -

For John Holmes. Then smaller, and last, her name.

She's impossible, that one! I can give her nothing.

What isn't at Cumberland Street is somewhere in her books,

And some from there, too. What isn't in her books, yet,

Is in her memory, at her discretion, in that garden,

In those round open lighted and delighted eyes -

So I say nothing to her, and bring her nothing. I repeat

A story of her sure quick movement among imponderable

Tact, generosity, praise. Her mannerliness imitated

Is a poem. The photograph, after all, was of her.