Unfinished that, for tears had smeared the paint.

The rest was landscape, not yet brought to be.

That was a holy afternoon to me;

That book a sacred book; the flat a place

Where I could meet my mother face to face.

"She had found peace of spirit, mother had,

Drawing the landscape from the attic there--

Heart-broken, often, after rows with dad,

Hid like a wild thing in a secret lair.

That rotting sketch-book showed me how and where