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From “Chromatics”
I I THOUGHT to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me … | |
| But there was time … | |
| And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain staring into the abyss. | |
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| I do not know how long … | |
| I could not count the hours, they ran so fast— | 5 |
| Like little bare-foot urchins—shaking my hands away. | |
| But I remember | |
| Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein … | |
| And a wind came out of the grass, | |
| Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw. | 10 |
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| As the night grew | |
| The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth | |
| Fell in ashen folds about the hills, | |
| Like hooded virgins pulling their cloaks about them … | |
| There must have been a spent moon, | 15 |
| For the tall one’s veil held a shimmer of silver…. | |
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| This too I remember, | |
| And the tenderly rocking mountain, | |
| Silence, | |
| And beating stars….. | 20 |
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II Dawn | |
| Lay like a waxen hand upon the world, | |
| And folded hills | |
| Broke into a solemn wonder of peaks stemming clear and cold, | |
| Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily, | 25 |
| Flecked with sun | |
| Fine as a golden pollen. | |
| It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow. | |
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| I smelled the raw sweet essences of things, | |
| And heard spiders in the leaves, | 30 |
| And ticking of little feet | |
| As tiny creatures came out of their doors | |
| To see God pouring light into his star. | |
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| It seemed life held | |
| No future and no past for me but this. | 35 |
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| And I too got up stiffly from the earth | |
| And held my heart up like a cup. | |
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