I cannot live nor die.
Now shadows rise nor fall,
Whisper aloud nor weep.
Struck beyond time and change
To a claw, a withering thigh,
A breath, a slackening call
To cold throats out of range,
I fade to a broken hope.
What good may mourning do,
The sigh, the soft lament,
The poised turning away
To name one faded name?
I will not name it now.
The day, the heart lie spent.
I find, now that I came,
Love that I cannot say.
The wind builds hock and tongue
Up from the sinewy ground.
But how may the blind air tell
A gnat from a lark? Alone,
Weighed by the laboring sound
Of wind on muscle and hair,
White as a thistle and bare,
I close the gate of hell.
Neat, shallow, hell is here,
Here, where I speak to lips
At one with stone and me,
Living and dead at one:
Love's cry, the shock of fear,
The shadow of rain that drips,
A mirror of gleaming stone,
The hands that cannot see,
Ears stricken blind, and eyes
That cannot speak nor sing,
And arms that barely breathe
Above ground or below.
Lumbering from hell, I gaze
Down at the earth so long,
I need no further go.
Here is the gate of wreath.
Love need no further go
Than back to the earth, to die.
The living need not seek
For love but underfoot.
The first star rises slow
And brambles lash my eye
And lichens trip my foot,
And yet, I cannot speak.
I will stand here, till dawn.
I will not fall down, to pray.
Dark bells may summon you
Out of your dream to cry.
Then I will tread your lawn
Through a soft break of day,
To see your day go by,
Who stare, and stare me through.
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