Fire from a fixed star Locates no place you are. No warmth left in the air Reminds that you were there. Everything you were Is canceled in the earth And memory's single tear Drowns all your footprints here. Yet in that crystal sphere All is reflected clear -- Though no one can stand tall Where earth itself is small And fire is cool and air Thinner than breath. Still, there, The elements prevail Reduced in memory's scale. Sad joke: to entomb you here In the damp world of a tear -- Though we navigate that globe With a Magellan love. Still, more like the Flood, this drop -- Or dead man's Ark! -- will whirl And whelm the dying world: To raise the living up. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO A MOUSE, ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH by ROBERT BURNS TO JOHN KEATS; SONNET by AMY LOWELL UNDER THE SHADE OF THE TREES [MAY 10, 1863] by MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON ZOLA by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON UNDERWOODS: BOOK 2: 6. THE SPAEWIFE by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON A DEFIANCE, RETURNING TO THE PLACE OF HIS PAST AMOURS by PHILIP AYRES THE BALLOON MAN by JEAN M. BATCHELOR |