The Death

TWO POEMS

THE DEATH

And the man turned to the wall, dogs howled,

Voices were hushed in the white room;

Three days the dream hovered, and the hollow eyes

Woke up in narrow streets and foreign places.

Candles were seen at dusk, and girls were scared;

Women kept children home from school;

The clouds took curious shapes, and shadows moved

Behind the boxwood hedge that he once planted.

And all this death pent up in him

Glowered across a countryside, as huge as life,

And the man was great with power, as if his death

Drew down great storms and tore the trees.

And this death grew, as if a number grew

Into immense and ramifying figures

Until no head could hold it; and he knew

That men were frightened now to pass the house

And that grey faces woke each morning, hoping,

Only to say at once: It is still there.

But all this faded from his mind:

He saw the wall, and felt the moment come

For which he had grown and labored all his life,

His own, more weak and welcome than an only son.