Death Of Little Boys

When little boys grown patient at last, weary,

Surrender their eyes immeasurably to the night,

The event will rage terrific as the sea;

Their bodies fill a crumbling room with light.

Then you will touch at the bedside, torn in two,

Gold curls now deftly intricate with gray

As the windowpane extends a fear to you

From one peeled aster drenched with the wind all day.

And over his chest the covers in the ultimate dream

Will mount to the teeth, ascend the eyes, press back

The locks while round his sturdy belly gleam

Suspended breaths, white spars above the wreck:

Till all the guests, come in to look, turn down

Their palms, and delirium assails the cliff

Of Norway where you ponder, and your little town

Reels like a sailor drunk in a rotten skiff.

The bleak sunshine shrieks its chipped music then

Out to the milkweed amid the fields of wheat.

There is a calm for you where men and women

Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.