Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HISTORY, by ROBERTA TEALE SWARTZ


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HISTORY, by                    
First Line: If, by the number of pebbles in the hand
Last Line: Even your hand is my bewilderment.
Alternate Author Name(s): Chalmers, Gordon Keith, Mrs.
Subject(s): History; Time; Historians


If, by the number of pebbles in the hand,
Men say, "This was the path of the perpetual snows:
A glacier moved
-- Ten inches every day -- and here it broke;"

If, by discovering an ancient jaw,
A thigh-bone, and some pitiful back teeth
Hugged by the earth,
Men say, "Three thousand years ago he lived,
And he was five feet seven inches tall;"

And if, by unearthing eighty-eight bright fragments
From a rubbish heap, at an excavated fane,
Men say, "Lugal-Zag-Gisa sent
One hundred vases, an offering to this place,
And from the Mediterrean to the Gulf
Was his domain, --"

Why can I not decipher present you,
And know you? -- All beyond analysis
Dateless and nameless you!
How strange you are.
Even your hand is my bewilderment.





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