Poems for my Daughter

A favourite uncle sent me this, an adapted excerpt from Horace Gregory's 'Poems for my Daughter'

Tell her I love,

she will remember me

always, for she is

of my tissues made;
she will remember

these streets where the moon's shade

falls and my shadow mingles
with shadows sprung

from a midnight tree.

Tell her I love that I
am neither in earth nor sky,
stone nor cloud
but only this

walled garden she knows well
and which her body is.

Her eyes alone shall make

me blossom for her sake;
contained within her, all

my days shall flower or die
birthday or funeral
concealed where no man's eye

finds me, unless she says:
She is my flesh and I

am what she was.

- Horace Gregory