Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTER TO A POET, by DOROTHY RANDOLPH BYARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LETTER TO A POET, by                    
First Line: Climb no more. You will be lost
Last Line: Arrowed falling -- through abyss -- abyss.
Subject(s): Letters; Poetry & Poets


Climb no more. You will be lost
Above June, above frost
Higher than snow, spurning ice,
Lost at the hidden turning
At the brink unheralded
Where you will drink
Treacherous ether,
Where your foot will find
No sustenance, no least response.
There you must meet the imperative instant that instructs
Palm and toe in feline gripping
Against cataclysmic slipping,
For no path is there
Save a sudden path of air,
A steepness walled by cliffs of polished wind.
Nothing then to upbear
Any tread. Never a meager jut or stair
To stay or bind
Your too imminent quest.
No jagged root that cracked the boulder
To serve your clutching fingers
Or give comfort of a long wound to your thigh, to your shoulder.
But with feet met to point the downward arrow of your body
And hair made straight
By dreadful swiftness to a haft
Feathered of sheared eagle-plume for keeping narrow
A descent so appalling,
You will pierce a vacuum that yields
At last, no sweet end in valley or in fields
Nor in anything of solace; only this
Arrowed falling -- through abyss -- abyss.





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