Oh if a thousand old folk looked askance when a puff of cyanide like a colorless wind seized their gentle world so and so who else observed it Yet behind the customary daylight the small dance of twinkling leaves had darkened and the scenes that were revisited and tales retold were not the same Strangely the world looked empty and strangely distant as if the stones themselves had grown absentminded and had forfeited their presence yet the suns rose the moons set and people were openhanded or closefisted as before The children went back to school where a few of them comprehended that what was called their questing was their lack. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON BEING ASKED TO WRITE A POEM AGAINST THE WAR IN VIETNAM by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE LAMP OF LIFE by AMY LOWELL TWO POEMS FROM THE WAR: 2 by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH A MENDOCINO MEMORY by EDWIN MARKHAM NOTHING WILL CURE THE SICK LION BUT TO EAT AN APE' by MARIANNE MOORE |