home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- THE WINDING STAIR AND OTHER POEMS
-
- IN MEMORY OF EVA GORE-BOOTH AND CON MARKIEWICZ
-
- THE light of evening, Lissadell,
- Great windows open to the south,
- Two girls in silk kimonos, both
- Beautiful, one a gazelle.
- But a raving autumn shears
- Blossom from the summer's wreath;
- The older is condemned to death,
- Pardoned, drags out lonely years
- Conspiring among the ignorant.
- I know not what the younger dreams --
- Some vague Utopia -- and she seems,
- When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
- An image of such politics.
- Many a time I think to seek
- One or the other out and speak
- Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
- pictures of the mind, recall
- That table and the talk of youth,
- Two girls in silk kimonos, both
- Beautiful, one a gazelle.
- Dear shadows, now you know it all,
- All the folly of a fight
- With a common wrong or right.
- The innocent and the beautiful.
- Have no enemy but time;
- Arise and bid me strike a match
- And strike another till time catch;
- Should the conflagration climb,
- Run till all the sages know.
- We the great gazebo built,
- They convicted us of guilt;
- Bid me strike a match and blow.
-