Poetry

Like two wrestlers etched
around some ancient urn,

we’d lace our hands, then wrench
each other’s wrists back

As if you were a child again; you smooth
a little space of sand, with careful fingers
pick out a twig, a stone, a scrap of paper,

When all the centuries return,
night falling, to their beauty,
to the ends of the universe rises
the deep oneness of the earth.

A wanderer hears drums, warning him of war,
And that one cry of autumn from a wild-goose at the border,
And he knows that the dews tonight will be frost

Four hundred dollars beat for him Like a still heart within the house,
Midway the wall whereon a clock Made nightly music for the mouse.