I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house Of one room and one window and one door, The only dwelling in a waste cut over A hundred square miles round it in the mountains: And that not dwelt in now by men or women. (It never had been dwelt in, though, by women, So what is this I make a sorrow of?)
For that you never acknowledged me, I acknowledge the spring’s yellow detail, the every drop of rain, the anonymous unacknowledged men and women. The shine as it glitters in our child’s wild eyes, one o’clock at night. This river, this city, the years of the shadow on the delicate skin of my hand, moving in time.
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
The angel — three years we waited for him, attention riveted, closely scanning the pines the shore the stars. One with the blade of the plough or the ship’s keel we were searching to find once more the first seed so that the age-old drama could begin again.
"As certain also of your own poets have said"— (Acts 17.28) Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")— To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!
It must be troubling for the god who loves you To ponder how much happier you’d be today Had you been able to glimpse your many futures. It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings Driving home from the office, content with your week— Three fine houses sold to deserving families— Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened Had you gone to your second choice for college,
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:
"I found Him in the shining of the stars, I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. O me! for why is all around us here
I was thinking of a son. The womb is not a clock nor a bell tolling, but in the eleventh month of its life I feel the November of the body as well as of the calendar. In two days it will be my birthday and as always the earth is done with its harvest.
Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
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