I
Winter founders under a crash of ice,
A cold sweat of river grinding its floes,
Muck breaks out from slush in a brown ooze
And time for a change: to marry, to morrow, divorce:
Most of the world wants heat before it dies.
Always between wars, never a thing done,
Listen for breathing at the other end of the line
Where light and dark pile up in waves of heat
And where the thing done burrows into the bone
For your children’s children, so they’ll know it’s home.
II
A half-life seventy years or more
Rotting inside and staining air:
These are my elements. Who’d dare
To touch me weeping like a sore?
Fire in the marrow, spore in cell,
I’ll spread secret under pain.
Let them chart me stain by stain
Who wonder if they wish me well.
Who sees me? Not a single soul.
For all they’ve felt me crawl their hide,
Not till they tear themselves inside
Will they get back a living whole.
III
Over a grave the lesson runes in stone:
All that we handle and care comes one by one,
Learning comes late, father dies to son,
Sons come back together and leave alone.
They will have grown: still, we shall know their faces
In a crowd of changes as they will see ours the same.
We shake hands—they have gone away from home-
And we startle at the roughening of their voices.
When will we ever speak to one another?
Must we too die before they can care to answer?
No word-not a look-never the still gesture
Reaching from one to one and back together.
We are all crazy, cracked in the head and heart by want,
To find, keep, handle and throw aside:
All favors come small, we have to learn to add
And bundle a world together hint by hint.
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