In that land all is and nothing's ought; No owners or notices, only birds; No walls anywhere, only lean wire of words Worming brokenly out from eaten thought; No oats growing, only ankle-lace grass Easing and not resenting the feet that pass; No enormous beasts, only names of them; No bones made, bans laid, or boons expected, No contracts, entails, hereditaments, Anything at all that might tie or hem. In that land all's lackadaisical; No lakes of coddled spawn, and no locked ponds Of settled purpose, no netted fishes; But only inkling streams and running fronds Fritillaried with dreams, weedy with wishes; No arrogant talk is heard, haggling phrase, But undertones, and hesitance, and haze; On clear days mountains of meaning are seen Humped high on the horizon; no one goes To con their meaning, no one cares or knows. In that land all's flat, indifferent; there Is neither springing house nor hanging tent, No aims are entertained, and nothing is meant, For there are no ends and no trends, no roads, Only follow your nose to anywhere. No one is born there, no one stays or dies, For it is a timeless land, it lies Between the act and the attrition, it Marks off bound from rebound, make from break, tit From tat, also today from tomorrow. No Cause there comes to term, but each departs Elsewhere to whelp its deeds, expel its darts; There are no homecomings, of course, no good-byes In that land, neither yearning nor scorning, Though at night there is the smell of morning. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SORROW SINGERS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE WILLOW by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON MOTHER NIGHT by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON AND SO, I THINK DIOGENES by AMY LOWELL UPLANDS IN MAY by CARL SANDBURG ON AN UNFINISHED STATUE BY MICHAEL ANGELO by GEORGE SANTAYANA |