We slept that night in Delaware, Ohio:

A magnificent and sleepy country,

Oak country, sheep country, sod country

We slept in a huge white tourist home

With National Geographics on the table.

North of Columbus there is a kind of torpid joy,

The slow and muddy river,

The white barns leaning into the ground,

Cottonwoods with their trunks painted white,

And houses with small observatories on top,

As if Ohio were the widow’s coast, looking over

The dangerous Atlantic.

Now we drive North past the white cemeteries

So rich in the morning air!

All morning I have felt the sense of death!

I am full of love, and love this torpid land.

Some day I will go back, and inhabit again

The sleepy ground where Harding was born.