Classic Poem

This brilliant animal mirth and this too brief
Agility of sense in wrist and brain
Must perish in some moon of the dripping leaf
And pass with the duck's wedge and the snarl of rain;
This hand that struck the violin or stroked
The flute to a fever and these brittle cells
Where God gripped Satan will be something choked
And chilled — a pinch of dust, a drift of bells.

What a dark irony that we who leap
Through solstices of song and sweat and groans
Must quit our beauty for a venial sleep
Which the sick buzzard sniffs at and disowns,
And end up spilling in a little heap
To beat at heaven by a door of bones!