Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO NINE WHO VANISHED LONG AGO, by RAYMOND HOLDEN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO NINE WHO VANISHED LONG AGO, by                    
First Line: O beautiful, wind-blown
Last Line: Haunting rembered bloom.
Alternate Author Name(s): Holden, Raymond Peckham


O, beautiful, wind-blown,
Compassionate young nine!
Upon what fire-forged stone,
By what sun-kindled pine
Should kneel this body of mine?

From silver-silled long nights,
From prismed webs of dew,
From valleys and blown heights
I have cried out for you
As Beauty bade me do.

How, how shall I fall
As leaves fall to a dust
That takes and tries them all?
How shall this being trust
Its range to the world's crust?

O, dead, deep-buried Girls
Sunk now to the fierce core
Wherefrom the soul's fire whirls,
How shall I suffer more
With none to suffer for?

O, beautiful, wind-blown,
Unanswering dear Nine!
Upon what brutal stone
Beneath what heedless pine
Shall I fling this body of mine?

In the still-chambered night
My heart gives tears to eyes
That ache for absent light,
Knowing, magician-wise
That sunk suns may not rise,

Nor with them the conceived
Sweet ministers to minds
Which now are interleaved
With waters and with winds
Where more than darkness blinds.

O, you who once deferred
The tragic fall of pain
Inevitable, who heard
The sad sweep of that rain
Which nourished man's first brain,

You who gave speech to men's
Far-fathoming strange gift,
Look now through the sharp lens
Of eyes that wetly lift
Toward storm too deep to rift!

Look! Look! This troubled soul!
This water in the eyes!
Lift up the broken bowl
And scatter to the skies
These drops which life denies!

Oh, vanished, vivid, Friends!
In what wind-raftered hollow
Under this sky that bends
With weight of sun and swallow
Lie the lost limbs I follow?

I -- the infirm old child
Of a still-eager womb!
A ghost, among things piled
Like walls that make a tomb,
Haunting rembered bloom.





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