Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BRIEF ENTERPRISE, by ALICE MONKS MEARS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BRIEF ENTERPRISE, by                    
First Line: Others knew the lazily-shepherded summer years
Last Line: Which is indivisible man and his brief enterprise of love.
Subject(s): Love; Romance


Others knew the lazily-shepherded summer years,
the sunny, irised ledges of the onetime years,
the sense of time only like a noon-still light
hearted with a far bell; knew all that is ancient as the lute,
idyllic, silent, forgotten. They held in hand the half-grown
feather-breasted hours, wing-clipped against flight,
stroked to song; put the teeth to some warm dripping fruit
as they lay in the slow soundless shadow cooling the stone.

Envy them if you will, but this plummeting time,
the whir of these metallic years, this time
of splintered night, violent day, must strike the mind awake.
Vision of races: how we millions and millions plunge and pour
through strange skies, meteorites and fragments of
what inconstant star! must finally shake
and exhaust the little ego — clean it to the steely core
which is indivisible man and his brief enterprise of love.





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