Driving through Ohio

I
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.

II
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.

III
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.