Classic Poem

We came by boat in the late arctic twilight
To the abandoned town
In the sharp triangular grass at the river mouth
Where the glacier silt fans into the bay.

Cautiously from the slime-encrusted wharf
We found our way
By no path over the tide-flats to the crazy doorstep,
The grey rooms tilted open to the sky.

These were our rooms, accustomed as our hands and features;
Now we try
Each in his separate loneliness to reawaken
The familiar ghosts. And sadly fail.

Only from the trees on the tide-marked ff the pair of eagles,
Mated how long!
Fierce in their soaring and loving, willing us fiercely out of their valley,
Observe the curving wake of our boat on the slate bay.