Flowers drew me forth
that time when I went out
and the ground beneath my feet
fell away.
I held on to the stems
as the dark pulled me in,
held on as if I clutched
the light of the world in my hand,
not the torn throats
of narcissus blooms.
Through the long night
in the iron earth
I clung to the fickleness
of beauty, the only candle
for the tomb.
About the Author: Faye George's poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Yankee, Audubon's Sanctuary, and many other journals, magazines, and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry collections,;A Wound on Stone and Back Roads, and two chapbooks,Only the Words and Naming the Place. George has received the Arizona Poetry Society's Memorial Award, the New England Poetry Club's Gretchen Warren Award and Erika Mumford Prize, among other honors; and her work is represented in Poetry magazine's 90th year retrospective, The Poetry Anthology, 1912–2000. She lives in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
"Kore" (which means "girl" or "young woman" in ancient Greek) first appeared in Poetry, January 1991, and is copyright c 1991 by The Modern Poetry Association. It appears here by permission of the author and the editor of Poetry, and may not be reproduced in any form without such permission.