Classic Poem

Beat, beat, with your soft grey feet,
Tear at the cold, rough stone.
His grave is here, but it's many a year
Since the grass on it was mown.

His ears are crumbled to bitter dust,
His eyes are a hollow bone.
Your twisting hair is bright and fair,
But he is under a stone.

Go back again to your own wide tomb,
Leave him in peace within
His grave that is narrow and shallow and small,
There is no room for two between either wall,
And the walls are caving in.

There are nests of worms in the underground,
And the grass-roots wind across,
Like a counterpane to keep out the rain
Is the green-eyed, clutching moss.

Go back to your tomb a mile away,
Go back through the still bronze door.
The arms which are carven upon its front
Are there as they were before.

No trace of escutcheon is on this stone,
And burdocks have pushed it awry,
And the flowers on tiptoe out of his mouth
Are staring into the sky.

Over his grave is a moan of wind,
And hemlock-trees bow down,
And a hemlock cone lies on the stone
Stained with smoke from the town.

What have you to do in this dismal place
By a dingy, broken stone?
He has no hands and he has no face,
And bone cannot wed with bone.

You took his flesh and you took his heart,
But his bones are his own to keep.
Knuckle and straight, he has them all
Down in the gravel deep.

Perhaps he laughs with his hard grey mouth,
Perhaps he shouts with glee,
And cuddles his bones up one by one,
And wishes that you could see.

Perhaps he plays jackstones with his bones,
And bets how long you will stay,
He knows all about those bright bronze doors
Waiting a mile away.

For you in the flesh teased him in the flesh
And would not let him be,
Till you teased him out of his flesh for good
And into Eternity.

But what is fire to a living man
Is nothing at all to a bone.
He lies at ease in the cold and the mold,
And he lies at ease alone.

He will be part of the earth in time,
You will be only dust,
And your carven door will be nothing more
Than a heap of eating rust.

So much for your azure fleur-de-lis,
And your cross in a chevron d'or.
He will be lilies in a morning breeze
At the foot of a sycamore.

The world goes round, and the world goes round,
And who knows what may come out of the ground
When a man is planted under a mound.