Classic Poem

They are like the hours,
down now, of the old year,
and underfoot, these stars
burnt with their colors of passion,
saturnalia and fear.

As if innumerable hands
reached up—but they can give
nothing to these new puritans,
the bare winterward hills—no,
nor anything receive,

all substance torn away
except their simple two-
dimensional inlay
to the wet empty road.
… Close to those others, too,

whose upturned hands, faces—
faint stars—we walk upon,
the fixed and flattened races
lying pressed to the under-
sides of turf and stone.

Dusk demonstrates now, on
this hill thrust toward the night,
how night's quadrillion
leaves, great galaxies
stemmed from the infinite,

will early glitter in
each tree, and never wither.
Like sainthood after sin…
But we shuffle dead leaves
and mourn the loss rather.











By permission of the author.