Poem
Amy Beeder
THE DEADLY POPP
THE DEADLY POPP
THE DEADLY POPP
Their odor so powerful that anyone who breathes itsleeps within a ring of silken tents and is
innocent as water, as petals on roads of poplars
with syrup-sky for pale distance, as milkmaids’
pollen skirts among the clover. Cropper & tilled,
spent sap of the body’s best memory, this —
Sleepyhead, my poppy-milk, O field of deadly flowers:
I know dark from bright & milk from white
in hawthorne-flower; I know milk from honey.
Would you have drunk the offered cup
just to sleep forever in the trembling grass?
Ruination and regret, I would have drunk it
bitter grain & bitter sleep, if you’d lay down.
© 2004, Amy Beeder
From: Poetry, Vol. 183, No. 5, February
Publisher: Poetry, Chicago
From: Poetry, Vol. 183, No. 5, February
Publisher: Poetry, Chicago
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Poems of Amy Beeder
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THE DEADLY POPP
Their odor so powerful that anyone who breathes itsleeps within a ring of silken tents and is
innocent as water, as petals on roads of poplars
with syrup-sky for pale distance, as milkmaids’
pollen skirts among the clover. Cropper & tilled,
spent sap of the body’s best memory, this —
Sleepyhead, my poppy-milk, O field of deadly flowers:
I know dark from bright & milk from white
in hawthorne-flower; I know milk from honey.
Would you have drunk the offered cup
just to sleep forever in the trembling grass?
Ruination and regret, I would have drunk it
bitter grain & bitter sleep, if you’d lay down.
From: Poetry, Vol. 183, No. 5, February
THE DEADLY POPP
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