Fear thy awesomeness

I.

Out of the dark Aquinas sang,

  He broke his heart in two.

Crows gathered, and little by little

  The leaves fell from the trees,

Snow fell, and the church bells rang,

  And all the lovers flew

Obscenely joined and shivering

  Over the frantic seas.

The heavy has splintered the yellow wood

  And powdered the yellow wall

And the broken heart of Thomas shrivels

  Little by little away,

That long cool look of evil and good,

  That vision of man’s fall,

Shrivel. The beautiful brown hordes

  Are howling for their prey.

II.

Under the leafless arches

Their bleeding faces move;

Those whom dissatisfaction

Inward and dream ward drove

Haunt me, and I can hardly

Hear through their broken cries,

Hear through their broken whispers

The voice of the on I love.

The flies under the arches

Are gorging upon fate,

And the cold lips of the dying

Hour on hour create

Whether with cries or whispers

Survival after death,

Recompense after death

In the hot hearts of the great.

Capital after capital

Re-echoes with the cries

Of lives never completed.

Victor on vanquished lies

And pours his howling seed

Deep into that dark hollow,

Deep into the dark ocean

In which all wisdom dies.

Birds flow under the heavens,

And seas over there beds,

And the endless sea of history

Flows over the dead

While I wait in the useless city

For the voice of the one I love,

For the head of the one I love

Beside my sleepless head.

III.

Homeward the luckless mariner

Goes winding through the flood,

Homeward the single swallow dives

Above the deep wood,

Homeward the gleaming mackerel

His liquid arrow weaves,

But you and I must wonder on

Under the pointed leaves.

The night is crawling fast, the fortress

Rises wast and still

And the lights are fading one by one

Along the endless hill.

We go, yet never knowing where,

Arm in arm we go,

And then the savage wood will end

How can we ever know?

(By: Fredric Prokosoch “New Poems 1942” page 150-151.)