At Last Be Still

Grief should be silent and slow as the risen moon,

Balanced in stillness and dark at the edge of the sky,

Instead of an endless fire tormenting the wrists,

Rising at last in a wordless and futile cry.

Only the hungry heart should lean upon silence

Calling without a voice, listening for no sound;

But the random stirring of the air

Thrusts us in dreadful weeping upon the alien ground.

Later, when the smoke of autumn lies on the restless air,

We should discover the sunlit wheat, and rise, and go.

Under the flight of birds, the fall of rain,

Grief should at last be quiet, be still. It is not so.