The Futile

The stone falls, the bird flies, the arrow goes home, But we have no motion, we scatter like foam.

O, give me a song to sing for your sorrow, A song that will lift, like a wave from the reef, You and myself, that will fling like an arrow My poor scattered words to the target of grief: I want to forget, to remember no morrow, To go with the petrel, to go with the leaf. . . .

We would fly with all things to the goal of their flying, We would turn with all things to the magnetic star, But we never can live, because of our dying, And we never can be, for the things that we are. We alone of all creatures — the stones more than we — Have no end, no motion, no destiny.