John Rodker. Under the Trees. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Under the Trees

By John Rodker


I SIT,
a stone.
Empty, black, diffuse;
one with this spongy mould
and quiet.	5
I sit,
bleak and friable,
and a wind whistles itself quietly
into distance.
And the trees chink the fairy gold,	10
which is so thin, so cold, so immeasurably remote.
All is become metallic—
Salt—bitter—very still.

Inert
I sit.	15
And all the debris of ten thousand years
snows me under.
Godlike,
inert,
bleak and friable,	20
porous like black earth,
I sit—
where quietly
pitters the ruin of ten thousand years.