You tell you self you never have to face things alone
But here you are standing, staring
Eyes glazing over
Tears falling from your eyes and face
Dirt all on your clothes and face
Running from the darkness
Each step only takes you farther back
Your heart beating faster and faster
Walls closing in
You scream but no one hears you
Chest rising faster and faster
Running toward the door
You fall and stumble
Falling and falling
Then it’s over
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing;
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
Here further up the mountain slope
Than there was ever any hope,
My father built, enclosed a spring,
Strung chains of wall round everything,
Subdued the growth of earth to grass,
And brought our various lives to pass.
A dozen girls and boys we were.
The mountain seemed to like the stir,
And made of us a little while--
With always something in her smile.
Today she wouldn’t know our name.
(No girl’s, of course, has stayed the same.)
The mountain pushed us off her knees.
And now her lap is full of trees.
Winds blow the open grassy places bleak;
But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,
They eddy over it too toppling weak
To blow the earth or anything self-clear;
Moisture and color and odor thicken here.
The hours of daylight gather atmosphere.
Faintly lit by a high-barred grating,
The low-hung cellar,
Flattens itself under the house.
In one corner
There is a little door,
So low, it can scarcely be seen.
Beyond,
There is a narrow room,
One must feel for the walls in the dark.
One shrinks to go
To the end of it,
Feeling the smooth cold wall.
Why did the builders who made this house,
Stow one room away like this?
It covered all
The cold east wall,
Its green, thin gold, purple, brown,
And flame running up and down;
Lifting its quiet bosom to every wind that crept
Up the high wall and in its darkness slept.
Then when the wind slept all the creeper turned
To undiminishing fire that burned and burned and burned.
But one black night
(For not in the light
May such treacheries be done)
Came with dishonoured weapon one
And cut the stem just where the branches thin
Their million-leaf'd wild wandering begin:
Cut the firm stem quite through, and so it bled,
And all the million leaves shivered and hung there dead.
Is it the wind that stirs the trees,
Is it the trees that scratch the wall,
Is it the wall that shakes and mutters,
Is it a dumb ghost's call?
The wind steals in and twirls the candle,
The branches heave and brush the wall,
But more than tree or wild wind mutters
This night, this night of all.
"Open!" a cry sounds, and I gasp.
"Open!" and hands beat door and wall.
"Open!" and each dark echo mutters.
I rise, a shape and shadow tall.
"Open!" Across the room I falter,
And near the door crouch by the wall;
Thrice bolt the door as the voice mutters
"Open!" and frail strokes fall.
I asked the watchful corners of a ceiling,
And the little darkened cracks the years scrawled there,
Why there are suns, and if there is a purpose
Behind this mask of life that people wear.
I asked some gnarled and patient shadows groping
Like wise hands of old blind men, on my wall ;
And everything I asked answered my question
With that one answer which does well for all.
If I listen shall I hear
Sounds that seem to hover near?
Speech of ship calling to ship
Through dark tides that twist and grip,
Dash of spray on a splintered coast,
The whisper-flutter of a host
Of sun-coloured butterflies
Wheeling under marbled skies;
The jabber of a little wind
Where the meadows' grass is thinned —
Or where trees forget their prides
To sway in unison like tides;
All the city's formal din;
All the hush where big streets thin
To little crooked lanes and lose
Themselves as the green distance blues
Dawn paints quaint histories
In pageant on my wall;
Imminent destinies
Concern it not at all.
I will make myself new thought;
My own is worn and old.
And old counterpanes will not
Keep out the wind and cold.
From borrowed thought I will choose
Pieces, and, row on row,
Patch a quilt of many hues
Like the quilts of long ago.
It cannot be so fine
As what the years have thinned.
But I dread the smothered whine
Of four grey walls' grey wind.
I will patch me a counterpane.
For mine is worn to scars.
And I fear the iron rain
Of a ceiling's splashing stars.