The Word Will Listen

Here, even here-and strangely, in a place

You never were-this pause for sound and sight:

The air, expectant, stirs to form the face

It never knew, and here your voice, not quite,

But nearly, sounds to nourish the sweet lie

Of you not gone forever, you not lost,

But soon to speak the name you call me by,-

And I look up, and listen, at the cost

Of learning, over again, there is no room

That's known to space, no midnight known to time,

But waits to greet me with this singular doom:

The lonely word that wanders for its rhyme,

Seeking, this way and that, the answering sound,

That everywhere is near, and nowhere found.