TWO POEMS
I
Tell me—if I had died,
Would your brain have gone damp
With smells of abandoned darkness
And stalactites of tears?
For me—whole days ache with your absence,
Whispering wet echoes of you.
I grow listless to the casual confusion of years,
Sure sequence of punctual suns,
Bursting of spent stars.
Here winds fall heavily
From black, blue-valleyed clouds,
Pour down steadily over high, broad plains.
This smoke of burning cedar
Blurs out your hollyhocks,
Pale, huge-cupped poppies,
Ceaseless titter of aspens.
Cedar smells of Persia:
Falcon-browed bowmen,
Lean javelin throwers,
Crisp-bearded kings in brass chariots
Swoop down from their altar hills.
Here hollow-footed years
Are seldom spoken of:
The wide earth slopes skyward,
Breaks off, remotely,
To the last cliffs of the world.
