“The foot cannot know Whether marble or mire The path it must go Toward the mind’s desire.” – George Dillon, American poet and recipient of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for “The Flowering Stone”), who was born 12 November 1906. “Again” Again before our ignorant eyes The beautiful moment blooms and dies. Here is a mystery as old As the rock moving under the sands. We are but children holding hands. Holding hands, what do we hold? What do we crush, whose seeds will flower Beyond the endless arid Hour? What do we hush, whose echoes chime Down the long star-drifts of bleak Time? What can we do but tremble still And kiss, and call the kiss a kiss, Having no eloquence for this Eternity we touch and kill? “Beauty Intolerable” Finding her body woven As if of flame and snow, I thought, however often My pulses cease to go, Whipped by whatever pain Age or disease appoint, I shall not be again So jarred in every joint, So mute, amazed, and taut, And winded of my breath, Beauty being at my throat More savagely than death. “To Losers” Let loneliness be mute. Accuse Only the wind for what you lose, Only the wind has ever known Where anything you lost has gone. It is the wind whose breath shall come To quench tall-flaming trees and numb The narrow bones of birds. It is The wind whose dissipating kiss Disbands the soft-assembled rose. It is the wordless wind that knows Where every kind of beauty goes. And if you lose love in the end Say it was taken by the wind.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 13:00:41 +0000