Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OMENS BY THE WAY, by JOHN COWPER POWYS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OMENS BY THE WAY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dear god! Our pilgrimage
Last Line: To meet this fluting run!
Subject(s): Graves; Happiness; Omens; Sleep; Voices; Tombs; Tombstones; Joy; Delight


Dear God! Our pilgrimage
Is a strange-scrawled page
Of script concealed by script!
Sweetness beyond belief
Leaps on us like a thief;
And when the joy has gone
Ashes we feed upon;
Then onward are we whipped.

Voices out of thin air find us,
When did we hear them before?
Footsteps follow close behind us
Along the empty shore.
Footsteps of whom?
And from what country do they come?

A starved and wrinkled tree
Has memories for me,
Pulling me fathoms deep
Under strange seas of sleep.
Like whispers "Memories of what?"
The soul within me answers not.

Sweet Christ! our wayfaring
Is an unholy thing.
We stumble over graves.
We open sealed doors.
We sink thro' broken floors.
We walk on perilous waves.

Just now within a crowd,
Lovely, but like a ghost,
One face, amid a host,
Beckoned me. Like a cloud
Of fire rose Babylon:
And dreaming I walked on.

Flutes in the air! They came
With February's sun.
Thoughts, buried under mountains, swift as flame
To meet this fluting run!





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