Poet.

.I.

That poet could not know
A time like this
And yet he cursed his day
Better than this.

Is time then a falling slide,
Poet and knave bruised
On a dumb rocky mountain side?
Then what we have we lose.

Still, what has been has been:
That from beauties flesh was born
Some marvellous, flesh tearing form
Still finds its somewhere reflective dream.

.II.

Or do we but count the corn,
Watch the rats’ numberless dawn,
Hear the room tying rain,
See ragged faces painless pain?

We always do that,
The prisoner and the rat
Eyeing their despair;
Or in the day
Where in we might say
“Here is the wrong, stupid lair.”

It’s hard to keep eye fixed ahead
When there’s but counting of the dead.

.III.

“Enough fools for us all!” Democrats say:
Thus they have built their day –
To confound the strong and the good
Idiots for a guard they’ve stood
Sweating, breaking out loud.

What poet can pierce that crowd?
.IV.

Over the hill more might be seen:
You watch the Tower beaten in dream
You who see the living die.

Over that crowd beaten eye
There’s but the canopy of lead:
Let the dead bury the dead.