Dedication
To my Mother and Father — This First Book
To You Who Read My Book
Soon every sprinter,
However fleet,
Comes to a winter
Of sure defeat:
Though he may race
Like the hunted doe,
Time has a pace
To lay him low.
Soon we who sing,
However high,
Must face the Thing
We cannot fly.
Yea, though we fling
Our notes to the sun,
Time will outsing
Us every one.
All things must change
As the wind is blown;
Time will estrange
The flesh from the bone.
The dream shall elude
The dreamer’s clasp,
And only its hood
Shall comfort his grasp.
A little while,
Too brief at most,
And even my smile
Will be a ghost.
A little space,
A Finger’s crook,
And who shall trace
The path I took?
Who shall declare
My whereabouts;
Say if in the air
My being shouts
Along light ways,
Or if in the sea,
Or deep earth stays
The germ of me?
Ah, none knows, none,
Save (but too well)
The Cryptic One
Who will not tell.
This is my hour
To wax and climb,
Flaunt a red flower
In the face of time.
And only an hour
Time gives, then snap
Goes the flower,
And dried is the sap.
Juice of the first
Grapes of my vine,
I proffer your thirst
My own heart’s wine.
Here of my growing
A red rose sways,
Seed of my sowing,
And work of my days.
(I run, but time’s
Abreast with me;
I sing, but he climbs
With my highest C.)
Drink while my blood
Colors the wine,
Reach while the bud
Is still on the vine....
Then...
When the hawks of death
Tear at my throat
Till song and breath
Ebb note by note,
Turn to this book
Of the mellow word
For a singing look
At the stricken bird.
Say, “This is the way
He chirped and sung,
In the sweet heyday
When his heart was young.
Though his throat is bare,
By death defiled,
Song labored there
And bore a child.”
When the dreadful Ax
Rives me apart,
When the sharp wedge cracks
My arid heart,
Turn to this book
Of the singing me
For a springtime look
At the wintry tree.
Say, “Thus it was weighed
With flower and fruit,
Ere the Ax was laid
Unto its root.
Though the blows fall free
On a gnarled trunk now,
Once he was a tree
With a blossomy bough.”