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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE ARCHITECT (2), by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Whatever his dreams have been it is now hard to say Last Line: He hears the wind that cries through feathered wings. Subject(s): Ambition; Architecture & Architects; Memory | |||
Whatever his dreams have been it is now hard to say, perhaps to build the last cathedral for an age watching God depart - the light gone left windows glass - so that he might say, I have given you domes and altars, I can praise no more and will not go within to beg. But the lust that carved fingers round a pencil has worn down, a chiseled saint caressed into his stone, the wash of a watercolor sky that pales into the pure primary fact of blankest paper. It was so much more difficult than he thought, not just bricks and mortar but wives and children. There was no commanding the kaleidoscope to stop. The pieces kept on falling in and out. Now he walks his property under lean-boughed trees where clouds are torn in the naked snare of twigs and marks for the ax those that could not survive, feeling the grass crisp with frost beneath his feet. The leaves curl black over the hidden embers but he sees above the haze of memory sharp and warm; the wild ducks in arcs of numbers fly so low he hears the wind that cries through feathered wings. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MEMORY AS A HEARING AID by TONY HOAGLAND THE SAME QUESTION by JOHN HOLLANDER FORGET HOW TO REMEMBER HOW TO FORGET by JOHN HOLLANDER ON THAT SIDE by LAWRENCE JOSEPH MEMORY OF A PORCH by DONALD JUSTICE BEYOND THE HUNTING WOODS by DONALD JUSTICE |
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