MOMUS is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray Against horizons purple, silent. Yes, Momus, Men have flung your face in bronze To gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk. They were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth, Gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom; All your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones Thrown over and through with a smile that forever wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone into dreams, by God. I wonder, Momus, Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look with deep laughter On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history. A droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from your kindliness of bronze, You give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple, silent; Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves, Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears, And blood drops of undiminishing war. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: GEORGE GRAY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE CITY REVISITED by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET AN EXPATIATION ON THE COMBINING OF WEATHERS AT THIRTY .... by HAYDEN CARRUTH DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA: 1. SUNRISE IN THE TROPICS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON |