Forty-Five
I knew by the look
you gave me, then,
I had made again
some sad mistake —
Yet looking back,
I remember only
walking by the river,
bending over pools
for pretty stones.
Poems on the topic: stone
Poems on the topic “stone” on Poets.by.
Hands of the Wind
Inside a pyramid, its reason:
A former king parched like a leaf
And now impervious to grief,
Bacilli, and a shift of season.
Dust of a million builders’ bones
Informs the wind with grit, lingers,
Then scrapes with unbelieving fingers
Familiar blocks of hand-hewn stone.
September 7, 1980
Today I have to wake up because
tomorrow I have to wake up. I presume
the geometry of a clock. So, I
wake up because I expect to be greeted
by either a circle or some stones. Now I'm out here
with my palms up. How can I be the only
one afraid of piety. I have to
wake up because tomorrow.
Precarious Migratory Spectacular
Stone weighting my palm
has sprung a cathedral
heart jumps
walking in the flesh of its surpassing grace
groin-vaulted and high as
no bird ever escaped to soar this
high-up—
seamless and
there is no blood
no feather
no bone—
stone cannot make the bird.
The Helpless
Those poor, heartbroken wretches, doomed
To hear at night the clocks' hard tones;
They have no beds to warm their limbs,
But with those limbs must warm cold stones;
Those poor weak men, whose coughs and ailings
Force them to tear at iron railings.
Those helpless men that starve, my pity;
Whose waking day is never done;
Who, save for their own shadows, are
Doomed night and day to walk alone:
They know no bright face but the sun's,
So cold and dark are human ones.
Spirit's House
From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.
The Solitary
My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
I have less need now than when I was young
To share myself with every comer
Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.
It is one to me that they come or go
If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.
Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone;
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me
Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone.
Portraits
You were in the room, yet your body
Was stone cut in drooping lines
And hued with decorous puzzling pinks and browns.
Even your hair seemed an elfin wig
Carelessly thrown upon your stone head.
And your eyes were hollows cradling broken shadows.
When you spoke your body did not change:
It was as though a flock of sleepy birds
Had issued from your stone mouth.
Vague words tapered off to pale weariness,
And sunlight was night smiling in his sleep.
Your hands moved as though they sought a dying emotion:
Your lips, drawn back, seemed evading sound.
When twilight fell upon us,
Like night striving to forget his dream,
We had long since passed out of the room.
The Witch
They--the good people--heard her song
From out of the wood that grows thick in the valley.
She had climbed to the hill-top that rises, blue,
Out of the wood as one comes through.
Grass on the hill-top waving long,
And a smooth gray stone where she kept her tally
Of the years and the days in the wild singing wood.
She lived her life as a virgin should
Till the people heard her song.
They climbed the hill and they frowned and said
“We liked your songs that we heard in the valley.
We don’t like that one you are singing to-day!
It’s mad and it’s bad and it’s much too gay!
But we’ve brought you some meat and bread.”
Then they saw on the stone her tally,
And they shook their heads ... “Look here! Look here!
Spires
Spires of Grace Church,
For you the workers of the world
Travailed with the mountains...
Aborting their own dreams
Till the dream of you arose--
Beautiful, swaddled in stone--
Scorning their hands.
An Old Workman
Warped... gland-dry...
With spine askew
And body shrunken into half its space...
Well-used as some cracked paving-stone...
Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
A stamp... as of innumerable feet.
Skyscrapers
Skyscrapers... remote, unpartisan...
Turning neither to the right nor left
Your imperturbable fronts....
Austerely greeting the sun
With one chilly finger of stone....
I know your secrets... better than all the policemen
like fat blue mullet along the avenues.
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