Classic Poem

This year, before it ends, holds out time as a weight to us,
We that are met in the streets as the streets are met in us,
And light is a weight, too; men shake it mightily off.
A youth, kicking the self-starter of a motor-bike, sends
A vast vibration out to the sun, and it returns his shadow in rain.
Out from the sun startles the line of things, and the flying cars
Set their undertones in a dark and silver note upon the line.
Even the weeds, ground weeds, can in their green brains sing that song.
This year, before it ends, is the imploring city — ageing before us.
Raising the delicate dust from the streets as a veil that will
Set million-branched forests sibilant before its eyes . . . Faint darkness,
And the desolate set of the tides, hidden: only the shadowed face
Dust-powdered, stone-calm, set to us, and the sad cry of the pilgrims
In the slow patch of moonlight under the nameless trees, crying
" Our god was night-hour, and the white path before us;
We, the homeless; and the shuddering branches ours and the great moan,
Rising out of agony, and the going, form on form of the dead;
And the façade that we are; this year before it ends."