MOURNERS These layers of piled-up skull, These layers of gleaming horror -- stark horror! Ah me! Through my thin hands they touch my eyes. Everywhere, everywhere is a pregnant birth, And here in death's land is a pregnant birth. Your own crying is less mortal Than the amazing soul in your body. Your own crying yon parrot takes up And from your empty skull cries it afterwards. Thou whose dark activities unenchanted Days from gyrating days, suspending them To thrust them far from sight, from the gyrating days Which have gone widening on and left us here, Cast derelicts lost for ever. When aged flesh looks down on tender brood; For he knows between his thin ribs' walls The giant universe, the interminable Panorama -- synods, myths and creeds, He knows his dust is fire and seed. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: WILLIAM JONES by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE RAND MCNALLY ATLAS by KAREN SWENSON THE RIGS O' BARLEY by ROBERT BURNS THE AEOLIAN HARP by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE |