The Flowers of Orcus Remember Thee

"... THE FLOWERS OF ORCUS REMEMBER THEE"

Ezra Pound

All your words are closed around you now:

The secret suns have set within your veins

And stars splash crystally against your walls of night.

If you had named yourself against the canyons of our silence,

Setting the echoes to clamor and the hawks to flight;

If you had said, It was this path in summer

To the freckled pool, the stippled leaves,

The dust-lush ripeness of the berry bush;

It was this book I walked; and turned that sage

Within his rooted grave; it was this night

That struck its bell within my sleep

And split your face into a thousand thousand eyes;

If you had said, 'Be in me as the bleak winds...'

I could have walked this cowl-hour

As a nun, chanting the beads of resurrection,

Slipping a loose latch wide.

They will scatter remembrance over you

As though you were a field to plant with Spring...

But I shall take no harvest from the crows

Nor startle larks into their stems of flight.

Amelia Snyder Melntyre