"Personal Helicon"

Question 1

Beginning

Answer 1

“As a child, they could not keep me from wells / And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. / I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells / Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.”

Question 2

Main

Answer 2

“A shallow one under a dry-stone ditch / Fructified like any aquarium. / When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch / A white face hovered over the bottom.”

Question 3

Conclusion

Answer 3

“Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, / To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring / Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.”