Tell, acquaint me why they care, men, if they lie here or there in finality? Tell how come they are so hot to put the cold bones they will have got in this or another remembered spot? And if nearby or far stone stand or urn repose, tell how they'll know it -- will they not have gone all beyond what knows and what's known, meadow or grove or any glory of mount or glimmering plot? For inside the skull if it be winter what is memory but the mere ice that will, before the ash leaves grow, thaw and rot? Here's ash in a knot of smoky wild rose above the valley over the river -- is it a green tree on midsummer day? Tomorrow it will not be a smoking ruin -- imagination is done! -- nothing, nothing it will be no thing. Tell, acquaint me half-dead mind why after all the tear- drenched years you'd still when ice frizzles your jelly lie high above valley and over river with the ruined ash and the burnt rose the rain and the winter and tell me why it is any use or good if a stone certify the name of nothing up here above that house known for love? Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COMPANIONS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON PENDULUM by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON POSSUM SONG (A WARNING) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON DOMESDAY BOOK: ELENOR MURRAY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS COOPER SQUARE by KAREN SWENSON MY MOTHER LEFT ME by KAREN SWENSON EPISTLE IN FORM OF A BALLAD TO HIS FRIENDS by FRANCOIS VILLON |