Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
-A.E. Housman
The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air–The edge
cuts without cutting
meets–nothing–renews
itself in metal or porcelain–
whither? It ends–
But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry–
Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica–
the broken plate
glazed with a rose
Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses–
The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end–of roses
It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits
Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness–fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching
What
The place between the petal’s
edge and the
From the petal’s edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact–lifting
from it–neither hanging
nor pushing–
The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space
-William Carlos Williams
Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
And lief lie down at nights.
But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.
-A.E. Housman
Give me a land of boughs in leaf
A land of trees that stand;
Where trees are fallen there is grief;
I love no leafless land.
-A.E. Housman