Classic Poem

They stand, each half a bole higher
up the bare hornstone — old bone
of the world broken
before the Miocene — their green
caverns ravening wind, sun,
white cloud and bright air,
cries of the hylas. Higher
than houses they are, and higher
still for the hill under them
and full of gold glints and old
winter gloom in their crowdark steeples.

And can they, for all their fathoms-
and-fathoms-deep converse with the light,
be blind — and, for all their whistling
and trestling, deaf — neither seeing not hearing
themselves nor the matted monks'-cloth
acres tumbling buff-colored into the greenblush
of April and the frogs' comic
and cacophonous chorus, " Rack-
ety-ax-ax, rackety-... " Ex-
actly! Exactly how
to be beautiful: to know
nothing, nothing of it at all,
to be still waving in Eden
a million Aprils ago.











By permission of the author.