Miranda

(in the house of a suicide)

Prospero dowered his daughter here with this island:

where everything, million-pinned redwood, hummingbird,

malachite holly leaf, sweet honeysuckle,

elbowed and feathery ridges, thistledown

going wherever it wants to go, fog in the vales,

everything presses itself on the sight like a dream,

manifold, bright, just as the vision expected.

The hills of wild rye rise up, like cumulus, golden

over your brow, and below, like a chasm, the long

larch spears reach up to your feet.

But on this island Prospero's daughter died;

by her own hand she canceled these horizons.

Ask her whatever question you will, she burns

out of the blue sky, terrible, mute.

Frederick Turner

From April Wind, © 1991.  Reprinted by

permission of University Press of Virginia.