After Lamentation
Isn't the moon old enough
That it returns,
A white unfed hound
Whose master is dead?
Has the sea no grief
That it speaks
All grief but its own?
His mind knew her so well
He watched the wind lay out
The white flowers of bush and tree
As her cool white face.
The earth, a mirror,
Remembered no face —
Answered no voice —
Indifferent watcher.
The hour, a dead pool,
Soft brilliant surface
Where moved shadows —
Quarreling heavens.
Eyes closed,
Ears heard not,
Flesh felt not.
At the loosening of her hair
Sounded
The rush of water
In deep caves.
Questions there waiting to be answered —
A bridle for the horse,
A saddle for the rider.
Answers there —
Cloud-shadows over white sands,
Shadows of young eagles
Returning to high lonely nests.
There is something
Keeps questions and answers forever apart there
As man
From his own face in the glass.
Life is a shrine
To a brass god
Lit by upraised tapering arms.
Its prophets speak with wooden tongues.
Breasts of women
Are not for lips of brass or steel, or wood, or gold,
Nor hair of women
To darken jeweled eyes
That never laugh nor weep.
His talk is a beating of wings
Against crystal doors.
Through them he sees,
But chill crystal doors
Gather screen of frost.
How can there be flight
Towards horizons
Without color or sound?
How can motion of shadows
Measure distance?
How can vanishing of shadows
Measure time?
What man the quick feet,
The light feet,
The giant silence of his shadow?
What words the slow ponderous majesty
Of man's shadow
Climbing the white face of a kill?
What words melt into silence
As man's shadow
Into silent darkness?
His shadow goes through
The crystal doors;
The white screen of frost
Has no power like this power,
No silence like this silence.
Her touch troubled him
As the sea troubles land.
He dead at the roots,
The sun, the rain, not of his world;
The green, the gold, the red, the white seasons
Unused heaps of chalk
In which his sapless body
Drops no seed
When seasons change.
Wine is good, food, song,
The white bodies of women —
But these are neither questions nor answers:
These are the earth,
These die not.
What good to him
Who is dead at the roots
And drops no seed
When seasons change?
He sees crossroads
Where there are only mountains and sea;
Divided
As wind is divided
He goes all ways.
Naked,
He hid in a house of glass.
Does the sun know its own brightness?
Night built a better house.
Women wandered in search of him —
Lost their way.
Smell of hair,
Warmth of bodies —
White bodies
As the flash of light on china plate
Were lost,
Could not find him.
He put out his hands
As a tree puts out flowering branches
To the wind
Yet women passed
As wind passed,
Heavy, warm with night's damp crush.
That it returns,
A white unfed hound
Whose master is dead?
Has the sea no grief
That it speaks
All grief but its own?
His mind knew her so well
He watched the wind lay out
The white flowers of bush and tree
As her cool white face.
The earth, a mirror,
Remembered no face —
Answered no voice —
Indifferent watcher.
The hour, a dead pool,
Soft brilliant surface
Where moved shadows —
Quarreling heavens.
Eyes closed,
Ears heard not,
Flesh felt not.
At the loosening of her hair
Sounded
The rush of water
In deep caves.
Questions there waiting to be answered —
A bridle for the horse,
A saddle for the rider.
Answers there —
Cloud-shadows over white sands,
Shadows of young eagles
Returning to high lonely nests.
There is something
Keeps questions and answers forever apart there
As man
From his own face in the glass.
Life is a shrine
To a brass god
Lit by upraised tapering arms.
Its prophets speak with wooden tongues.
Breasts of women
Are not for lips of brass or steel, or wood, or gold,
Nor hair of women
To darken jeweled eyes
That never laugh nor weep.
His talk is a beating of wings
Against crystal doors.
Through them he sees,
But chill crystal doors
Gather screen of frost.
How can there be flight
Towards horizons
Without color or sound?
How can motion of shadows
Measure distance?
How can vanishing of shadows
Measure time?
What man the quick feet,
The light feet,
The giant silence of his shadow?
What words the slow ponderous majesty
Of man's shadow
Climbing the white face of a kill?
What words melt into silence
As man's shadow
Into silent darkness?
His shadow goes through
The crystal doors;
The white screen of frost
Has no power like this power,
No silence like this silence.
Her touch troubled him
As the sea troubles land.
He dead at the roots,
The sun, the rain, not of his world;
The green, the gold, the red, the white seasons
Unused heaps of chalk
In which his sapless body
Drops no seed
When seasons change.
Wine is good, food, song,
The white bodies of women —
But these are neither questions nor answers:
These are the earth,
These die not.
What good to him
Who is dead at the roots
And drops no seed
When seasons change?
He sees crossroads
Where there are only mountains and sea;
Divided
As wind is divided
He goes all ways.
Naked,
He hid in a house of glass.
Does the sun know its own brightness?
Night built a better house.
Women wandered in search of him —
Lost their way.
Smell of hair,
Warmth of bodies —
White bodies
As the flash of light on china plate
Were lost,
Could not find him.
He put out his hands
As a tree puts out flowering branches
To the wind
Yet women passed
As wind passed,
Heavy, warm with night's damp crush.
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