Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MEMORIAL, by THOMAS MCGRATH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MEMORIAL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Nothing prolongs. Neither the bronze plaque
Last Line: Fails you and fails. Forgive this second murder
Subject(s): Brothers; Murder; Half-brothers


Nothing prolongs. Neither the bronze plaque
Of graveyard splendor, nor public memorial. Even
The watery eye of memory, weeping its darlings back
Fails them. Flung like leaves on the cold heaven
In Time's own season, that Always when totals are taken,
And the mortal tree is shaken,
So, from its riven,
Blood-branched and bony haven,
The soul is blown toward that South where only the dead awaken.

Nothing arouses. Shrouded in marble snow
He enters the house of his fatal opposite, under
His careless star, and the statues. The bedded seeds outgrow
Their sleepy winter, but now there is no Spring thunder
Can shock him awake, who, lying companioned and lonely
In his small house, can only --
Against Time's yonder --
Live nigh as a bloodless wonder
In the chinese box of the mind, a mummied guest in that haunted and homely

Dark where nothing endures. Though the heart entomb
And hold that weakling ghost for a season, the altering
Cold years like snow blindfold our love, as time
Darks a stone angel. So does memory, faltering,
Kill you again -- your stillness is whirled and hurried
To nature's wilder order.
It is the faulting
Heart in that bloody welter
Fails you and fails. Forgive this second murder.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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