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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
LETTER TO A POET, by DOROTHY RANDOLPH BYARD 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB |
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