“My younger sister, dulled and fixed after her stroke, in the style of Gerard Manley hopkins”

O sister, heart-held, once brisk as linnet leap,  
Now stilled in hush, the swift-limned humor slow—  
Oh God’s bright child! With laughter that would sweep  
Down day’s dull drift, your sparking brims bestow.  

Now dulled, now fixed, yet not unskilled at grace:  
Deep in your gaze, the star that aches yet gleams.  
Your slackened mouth, old-witched with childhood’s trace,  
Breaks quiet, nestling sorrow in its seams.  

Spring, sprung in you, still strains against that frost.  
The pulse, beat-basined, coils and, coiling, stays—  
Yet I, who grieved you broken, know not lost  
All you flamed golden in remembered days.  

Ah, Christ-clear beauty, brackish, battered, bared!  
Stroke-stunned, you live in light less fleet, but spared.

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