It is
too long to quote in full here, but one has only to think
of a
few of the powerful and particular images that situate the joy
of the «swinger
of birches» within the real and fallen world: the ice like broken
glass, the trees bent by weather, the face that «burns and tickles with the cobwebs / Broken across it,» and the eye
watering «From a twig's having lashed across it open.»
I prefer a height that's within a
few inches
of the mattress, not
too much taller, not
too much shorter, for that convenience
of reaching over for your
glass of water,
glasses, or to turn out the lamp, etc..