poems27

THE FINAL INCH
�Twas like a maelstrom, with a notch
That nearer every day
Keep narrowing its boiling wheel
Until the agony

Toyed coolly with the final inch
Of your delirious hem,
And you dropped, lost, when something broke
And let you from a dream.

As if a goblin with a gouge
Kept measuring the hours,
Until you felt your second weigh
Helpless in his paws.

And not a sinew, stirred, could help,
And sense was setting numb,
When God remembered, and the fiend
Let go then, overcome;

As if your sentence stood pronounced,
And you were frozen led
From dungeon�s luxury of doubt
To gibbets and the dead;

And when the film had stitched your eyes,
A creature gasped �Reprieve!�
Which anguish was the utterest then,
To perish or to live??
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THE TERM
A rumpled sheet of brown paper,
About the length and apparent bulk
Of a man was rolling with the
Wind slowly over and over in
The street as a car drove down
Upon it and crushed it to
The ground. Unlike a man it rose
Again rolling with the wind over
And over to be as it was before.
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Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
------------------
God have mercy on the sinner
Who must write with no dinner,
No gravy and no grub,
No pewter and no pub,
No belly and no bowels,
Only consonants and vowels.
-----------------
MUSIC
Music I have heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass,
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.