‘Not Marble Nor The Gilded Monuments’

THE praisers of women in their proud and beautiful poems

Naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes

Boasted those they loved should be forever remembered

These were lies

The words sound but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten

The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more

The sleek throat is gone -and the breast that was troubled to listen

Shadow from door

Therefore I will not praise your knees nor your fine walking

Telling you men shall remember your name as long

As lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English

Rings from a tongue

I shall say you were young and your arms straight and you!

mouth scarlet

I shall say you will die and none will remember you

Your arms change and none remember the swish of your garments

Nor the click of your shoe

Not with my hand's strength not with difficult labor

Springing the obstinate words to the bones of your breast

And the stubborn line to your young stride and the breath to your breathing

And the beat to your haste

Shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men to remember

(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost

Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation

Like dream words most)

Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women

I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair

And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders

And a leaf on your hair

I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women

I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair

Till the world ends and the eyes are out and the mouths broken

Look! It is there!