Classic Poem

I

Here's shade and comfort by this towering tree,
Dear Phaedrus, and a breeze to lull our rest.
Here let our thoughts flow undisturbed and free
As flows Laloki. Many sands have run
Since by Ilissus you and I reclined;
And many comrades journeyed to the sun
With whom we have shared everything but death.

II

I could not speak of them on my return;
I could not bare the wound so closely wrapped
Against corruption by the spoken word;
My smile the dreamer's shield held up to guard
A sense of impotence, a deep despair
Of making " over here" see " over there".

But someone spoke of Damas and Djezzine,
And phrased a pretty speech about Tobruk,
And in a flash the cramped suburban room,
The silly teacups and the linen cloth,
The heartless sympathy of common speech
Moved out beyond the compass of Time's reach:

And I was in a man's world, and the earth
Shook or stood still as we chose to dictate;
And life was ours, and death, and the sweet pain
Of thinking now and then of other days
When we were human beings, sheltered, fed;
The darlings of existence, fancy-led.

III

Bitterness sways me but a while: is gone,
And I remember mornings such as this
By such a green-banked, slowly-flowing stream
An aeon of experience ago.
Remember, too, a love that down the years
Has mocked me with its echoed might-have-been.

These notes I gather now; all chords resolve
In pointed harmony phrased by despair;
New-cadenced by regrets that rise and fall;
That hint of a solemn pity: and are gone.