COLD BRANCH IN THE BLACK AIR
Who taps? You are not the wind tapping?
No! Not the wind!
You straining and moaning there,
Are you a cold branch in the black air
Which the storm has skinned?
No! Not a cold branch!
Not the wind!
Who are you? Who are you?
But you loved me once,
You drank me like wine.
The dead wood simmers in my skull. I am rotten.
And your blood is red still and you have forgotten,
And my blood was yours once and yours mine!
Are you there still? O fainter, O further.... nothing!
Nothing taps!
Surely you straining and moaning there,
You were only a cold branch in the black air?
... Or a door perhaps?
GHOSTS GATHERING
(For B. C.)
You hear no bones click, see no shaken shroud.
Though no tombs grin, you feel ghosts gathering. Crowd
On pitiful crowd of small dead singing men
Tread the sure earth they feebly hymned; again
With fleshless hand seize unswayed grass. They seize
Insensitive flowers which bend not. Through gross trees
They sift. Nothing withstands them. Nothing knows
Them nor the songs they sang, their busy woes.