Poetry as she lay dying whispered, "all of this a ruse for fools!" but i saw her brave mask leaking bloodstained tears; i sighed with her fading soul. "where shall she go?" i asked the raucus crowd; but no one knew, for no one cared, and that at last was how she died.
despite his wars, History had never lost so much before, nor ever any better; beside his drooping frame i dripped my gloomy legs into her earthless grave. shallow sympathy: i with so few years will never comprehend such grief.
perambulating shores i thought of depths so far as nothing: "where has she gone?" i asked again and then, momentous as such pastel sky, the Sea! took up my dirge within his birds: in haunting, salty cries, and beady eyes.
i awoke to find such partial men who live whole lives without all Three. they never know! lost is the further life, within: as triune silhouettes are these dreams deep within the forest's shade where trees are thoughts! but oft forgot these Three, whence all the ancient seedlings sprang.
II
well: since the death of Poetry, History has stayed inside his books and shelves, eking solace from the complex carpet shadows. i sat with him today and heard how we have built such boxes for ourselves; the shadows creeping on the walls seemed to agree.
i took a walk to ask the Sea such things: he moves oh, ceaselessly and as we surged along he said it's true! the saddest thing he ever sees (and i think he must see everything) are shores--made not all of sand and time, but marble stone glass porcelain and plastic metal, or convenience: we bottle him and everyone.
then still-standing in their absence, i thought of you, o departed Poetry. you would have had such answers and behind them and around them you would write such slim smiles in your sparkling cavernous eyes. yesterday the world, i'd tell you, it smelled such of bright fall and the deepest joyful death. ah, how the leaves depart this world! but i had wished you would not do the same.
III
"i would have wept with her," i told the Sea for she was dead! but he unsmiling showed me shores where men learn not to weep.
IV
i lingered by the fog-damped rocks pulling on sweet thick Spring. oh, content & numb; little seeing, little feeling, sleep-thinking, but aware!--and yet, of whom? not the Sea far off, laughing to shore with such momentum, echoing thinly through the thickening wood (how it strains now to bloom!--most splendid of the Aches); nor History in his dusty libraries and war-sodden battlefields (they were similar fields and forests before, as they shall be ever more: only days, weeks of battle-blight excepted). not them.
but Poetry? not she that died! this, too: there was no Muse, no wordish stem blossoming in so much Spring--dead, was gentle Poetry. yet as i languid lay, dazed, intervening between such forested cathedral sunlight and moistened cool of living stone, some ghost-apparent beauty swept her frigid vacant hair under my breath. no words had she! who was Death's finest charge--but i can no more mistake than Hellenistic warriors miss Athene; shape-shifting goddesses both, sweet Poetry in mute spirit-skin i knew.
V
and then i knew that there are places: under her, protected by her, owned with quiet jealousy, where rest such living rocks on velvet floors man has never touched--but wait, you do not understand! angular monoliths, large as palaces, all one solid stone: built when Earth herself wrinkles. we snorkel past their tips like gnats to them, and they--stone titans!--themselves are merely pebbles, skipped across the wide, wide, terrifying Sea. how could we understand?
i've heard of days when he was cruel--the Sea in masculinity: heartless, as these terror stories tell--and the unsilent survivor, tale-teller, never tells his name.
but i've seen violence to the Sea as well: fierce motors rend his harsh, terrific hide, forcing great ship-horrors forward; he angers in the churning wake, a scar across his great momentous peace.
suddenly i stand as magistrate: distant ocean stones tell with silent honesty of tranquil sweet intent through time's long smoothing depth; while nearby birds betray their biased witness with the passion of their telling--all is not always warm and bright and well! i weigh the arguments against the distance to those fogged islands far beyond us. twenty miles isn't far, a sailor told me, not on land, but here--oh, here it's far too much. the end of everything could be just there; that is too much.
and so i cast my court-ballot: there is less violence here in sails. i've seen tall sisters glide upon the beautiful Sea-skin; pass in grace and slip along her body, held by wind and buoyancy. yet the Sea himself is never truly she: some else-such persists in all these tender femininities.
VI
and so i cast my court-ballot: there is less violence here in sails. i've seen tall sisters glide upon the beautiful Sea-skin; pass in grace and slip along her body, held by wind and buoyancy. yet the Sea himself is never truly she: some else-such persists in all these tender femininities.
VI
in dismal grey i wandered back, along the aimless cobblestones, breathing shallow thoughts. days stretched into weeks, months: my slow soul slept. i took up drinking, which made me hunger; took up smoking, which made me thirst. the drab brick walls closed in around, and City growled low and menacing, chasing me toward gloomy hills.
i met History in a cemetery, pause-walking in unkempt grass; he stooped to right a heavy-fallen headstone. we pondered on along, stride for step, and i asked him how long, dear friend, how long--have we lost forever Poetry? he told me gently Death is jealous of his own, and always has.
we came to a river, dark and rushing, and found the Sea quite weak within; he told us of a partial man who'd leapt to Death upon his bulk. i listened quietly and walked apart, leaving two silent forms behind: shattered triune, sharing grief to keep mere memories alive.i met History in a cemetery, pause-walking in unkempt grass; he stooped to right a heavy-fallen headstone. we pondered on along, stride for step, and i asked him how long, dear friend, how long--have we lost forever Poetry? he told me gently Death is jealous of his own, and always has.
if only had the Sea's poor partial man been whole!--but ah, cruel Death is jealous of his own.
and i thought of you, o departed poetry: how you would have wept and come to joy, in your cavernous gentle eyes.
