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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DEDICATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: They shall not die in vain,' we said
Last Line: And died, a silent writing down.
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


"They shall not die in vain," we said.
"Let us impose, since we forget
The hopeless giant alphabet,
Great stones above the general dead,"
The living said.

"They shall not be outdone in stones.
Generously, sculptured grief shall stand
In general over numbered bones
With book and index near at hand
For particular sons.

"And we the living left in peace
Will set aside such legal date
At such and suchlike time or state
Or place as meet and fitting is,
Respecting this."

O boy, locked in the grisly hollow,
You who once idly peeled a willow-
switch, whistling, wondering at the stick
Of willow's whiteness clean and slick,
Do not believe that we shall bury
You with words: aptly carry
Cloth flowers, proxy for love.
O we have done with granite grief
And silk denials: summing you
Within the minutes' silence—two!
More than you had need to target
Hate, against the pitiless bullet's
Calculated greed oppose
Heart's anger: falling, gave to us
What power to lance the pocket of
An easy past, what use of love
Teaching children's laughter loud
On shutters in an evil street,
What edge, O death, of days, delight?
What linch of love, spate of sun?
And shall we with a sedentary noun
Signature receipt, having had read
The catechism of the generous dead?

You who live, see! These,
These were his hills where laughter was
And counted years of longing, grain
And wintry apples scorched in sun,
Of corded hemlock deep in snow.
Here at his seven birches growing
Oblique by the boulder the fence has stopped—
Rusted wire, posts lopped
For staking. To circle love, he said.
And there are other fables made:
Of plough and intricate loom; the broken
Soldier on the sill; and latin
Parchment framed, conferring letters
On hooded death; the axe the motto
Against the wall; abandoned hills.

Fables for stout reading. Tales
Listened to by twice-told death.
Our tongue how silent, muscles lithe
O land, hoist by the lag-end of little
Deeds? What lack of monstrous metal,
Monumental mouths; over
This land what love, wheel, lever
Of God, anchorage, pivot of days,
Remembering?
Old and certain the sea,
The mountain-tilted sky, old,
Older than words, than you are old,
Boy, who never thought to point the hill
With dawn! Only as these, our telling:
As men labour: as harvest done:
At dusk a joyful walking home.
Of nearer things: how he was young,
And died, a silent writing down.





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