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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Skipwith Cannéll

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

A Riddle

Skipwith Cannéll

From “Songs of Hunger”

BITTER as tears

That for years

Are unshed;

Ashen and gray

As a day

That is dead;

Evil and ill,

With a chill

O’ the vault;

Barren as beaches

God leaches

With salt;

Hopeless as morrows

In sorrows

Immersed;

Desolate, grim,

Like a hymn

Of the cursed;

Lone as a cry

From the sky

Or the sea:

Answer my saying

In praying—

For me.