for T. E. Hulme
That stoop, swept, has a tidiness
exact as the curve of every brick
built into it,
an order that is of a piece
with the thing preserved from sloth.
So well is the good work done
no broom is shown,
not a spilled straw to mar
the hard, dry line.
The poems of Faye George have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, and Poetry’s ninetieth-year retrospective, The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002. Her three published collections are _Märchenhaft, like a fairy tale _(Earthwinds Editons, 2008), Back Roads (Rock Village Publishing, 2003), and A Wound On Stone, the 2001 winner of the Perugia Press Prize. She has received the Arizona Poetry Society’s Memorial Award and the New England Poetry Club’s Gretchen Warren Award and Erika Mumford Prize. She lives in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. (updated 4/2010)