Tropic Burial

TWO POEMS

TROPIC BURIAL

The day is passing in splendor, enormous clouds,

Color of hibiscus, wreathe the sky;

The hours of the sea spill the last bright minutes-

Nature, at least, knows how to die.

Along the road toward the sunset,

They carry the wooden box, a group

Of the insentient. All wear the eternal blue

Of dejection, and the eternal stoop.

They hide the withered tube of the body in the ground, ;

Huddling together in a blue smolder under the

brilliant haze;

And the earth, falling like night, buries forever

The sunset lingering in the eyes' hard glaze.