Classic Poem

I. MAPS .

I had no use for mezzotint or oil
When I was younger. Maps were better far
To splash your walls with color, and uncoil
Prismatic roads to Ind and Zanzibar.
Windows may frame a dung-heap, or a line
Of laundry jigging drunkenly; but these
Were casements opening wide to winds like brine,
Cormorant-pinioned winds from perilous seas.

I have torn down my maps, and burned, or sown
Their lying colors on the lying wind.
They cannot cheat me now, since I have known
The arduous roads to Zanzibar and Ind,
And found those lands of spurious jade and flame
As drab and drear as that from which I came.

II. LARIAT .

Once the horizon was a lariat,
Obedient to the cunning of my wrist.
And swaggeringly, the arrogant autocrat
Of an arena world, I made it twist
A tilting wheel of sinuous necromancy
Round heels and head, while, debonair and proud,
I vaulted out or in as pleased a fancy
Half tipsy with the plaudits of the crowd.

My craft has fled me now. The stubborn rope
Snarls in mid-air, goes awkwardly asprawl.
And the horizon that my urgent hope
Claimed for its toy has grown much like a wall,
Except, reata-like, it tightens fast,
To strangle me inexorably at last.

III. PLOUGH THE ROAD UNDER .

Plough the road under, and nail fast the gate.
Let there be tillage where the wheels cut deep.
Lay spur and saddle by. The year grows late,
And meager time is left to sow and reap.
The share will peel the sanded ruts asunder
Until no devious clue remains to chart
How I rode forth in quest of love and plunder,
And how returned, pauper in purse and heart.

Plough deep, and harrow well, and seed it thickly.
Earth, stubbornly remembering, may reveal
This year, perhaps, by twin rows dwarfed and sickly,
The sterile heritage of hoof and wheel.
Not long, though. Earth forgets. Her old scars swell
New harvests now. And may not mine as well?