poems57

PLOWBOY
After the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.

I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.
-----------------
UNDER A TELEPHONE POLE
I am a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing--humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the
     tears, the work and want,
Death and laughter of men and women passing through
     me, carrier of your speech,
In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the
     shine drying,
               A copper wire.
--------------------
THE SIMPLON PASS
Brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent, at every turn,
Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light--
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.
---------------------
I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me,
I'd like to be the help that you've been always glad to be,
I'd like to mean as much to you each minute of the day,
as you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the way.
-----------------
STARLIT NIGHT
The night is bright,
With a starlit sky
I sit and think,
As time passes by.
Oh stary night,
With a moonlit sky,
Take me away
And tell my why,
Give me a reason
For love�s end,
Give me a reason
For why I lost a friend.
I sit and think
All night long,
About the things,
That all went wrong,
Starlit sky,
Give me a reason why.
----------------------