Stone lions orient the empty fountain:
Quiet compass-points of such a noon
As stills the shadow to collect the shade.
The wind they quarter dies beyond their gaze.
Unmindful of the palms, the halted sky,
Their concave eyes look backward into rock.
Blind in this stasis whose four ends they are,
They do not view our prospect, change our change.
Through sight, diffused by no external change,
Time focuses upon the nerve alone.
If afternoon, however late, resumed;
If silence stilled again the shaken bell,
Direction might again derive from sun,
Insensate Earth companion sense toward death;
To yield us, not from mercy, not as hope,
Brute solace of that death which is not ours.
Noon spares the sepulcher its rent’s decay;
Prolongs in timelessness the once-chimed Host,
And the retarded fruit weighting the trees
Forever to these centers of their shade.
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