Quiet

James F. Ryan

QUIET

We sat alone and my eyes fed

Upon her lips. We were so still,

The colored ocean-side looked dead.

The sun took fire on the hill.

We lost the urge for any choice

But grew as passive as the skies.

She had my lips. I had her voice.

She had my tongue. I had her eyes.

TOWERS

Now the great city glimmers in the sun,

Stretching gold-ledged into gray distances,

While plumes of smoke rise slowly in the midst

Like incense to the day whose life is done.

Massed on the deep blue, lit, one by one,

Like embers spilled from the sky's furnaces,

Steeples and monuments, domes, palaces,

Lighten awhile, then ashen, gray and dun.

Ascending ffom the lake's smoke-clouded edge,

Pointed amid the sunset's livid streaks,