Classic Poem

Faster, faster with no loss of ritual
Stiff minions without banners, a steady guard —
And have marched since fell the first shaken leaf
Into the withering hand of Ermengarde:
Crushing the silly meadow-sweet the hearse
Collects at every house the fragment curse.

The men on the hearse are deaf, every Spring
They hear neither cry nor sweet civility;
Theirs is the margin between breath and breath,
Life's last, death's first; nor fore and after see —
These must be wasting like shadows, are as brief
As the silken smile that stilled Correggio.

Gateways to morning on the dusty road
Open with jaws incuriously set;
Weeping we follow like the steady toad
Drunk with his reverence. The mountain cat
Wheezes the air upon each granite crest
Raised on the good life"s burial in the West.

The laughter and the shouting of delight
Of children flexed into a summer noon,
Chatter of women striating the crisp dark,
The crinkled light of an imprisoned moon,
Stop and foregather, hesitate until
One rumor straight comes huddling on another
Of death, and death, and death!