Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COLOR OF DUST, by THEODORE OLSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COLOR OF DUST, by                    
First Line: Now I have learned this much at twenty-five
Last Line: Before the dark -- and may it not be long.
Alternate Author Name(s): Olson, Ted
Subject(s): Dust; Experience


I

Now I have learned this much at twenty-five:
That one may ring this world as does the sun
And find no land, nor any word of one,
Where there is wit or worth in being alive.
Well though he plan, and cunningly contrive,
The broth was brewed long since, the web was spun,
And he will have, until his days be done,
Sorrow to nurse him, bitterness to wive.

So it is here, and so in Samarkand.
Troy knew it so, and he is mad or blind
Who dreams it otherwise in any place.
I sought romance on many an alien strand.
One truth I found burns bitterly in my mind --
That man is a mean and crippled misfit race.

II

There is a glory in Northumbrian hills.
There is a charm on Macedonian lakes.
Yet in a flicker of breath the chalice breaks
And the tart amber ichor of beauty spills
Into the dust. A passionate hour distills
Life's wine to one rich draft. The dreamer slakes
His need -- quaffs of oblivion -- and awakes
To the dark travail of his own warring wills.

This is the curse -- that ever a man must come
Back to himself -- himself -- past love, past vision
That are but phantoms woven by the sun
In a barred room.
It is not Byzantium
I crave, but some far place where the shrill derision
Of self will follow no more. And there is none.

III

So it is wiser to live as others do --
Straitly, with temperate tread and cunning eye;
Loving no thing too much, for loved things die;
Building no temples that the years may hew

Asunder. Toil will get you gold, and you
Can buy with gold full many a glowing lie
To warm you -- music -- pictures -- and the shy
Sweet madness of poetry, loveliest, most untrue!

All lovely things are lies, in mockery fashioned --
Brave falsehoods -- immortality, and God,
And rhythm, and pattern, and sacrifice, and song.
Treasure them craftily, that, duly rationed,
They may eke out this wearisome period
Before the dark -- and may it not be long.





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