Christmases, my grandmother set A crystal tray of cookies out. She’d claim they were homemade; but bet Against such folksy verity, For emptied cartons lay about The kitchen where we all could see.

Could see, that is, had we just cracked The heavy portal to that room Which guarded stove and icebox, lacked Nothing her husband could afford, But seemed a cell of heat and gloom Where chicken thawed on the cutting board.

It was her inmost privacy Around which all that great house turned, And from which good things came to be, By what brow-glistening toil, what pride, What fussy cunning, none dared learn But, with our hunger, stayed outside.