The poem reaches out. The poet doesn’t care.
The poem does what a person in love wouldn’t dare.
The poem says precisely, without motive or riot,
The secret of the secrets crying in the quiet,
Secrets which the banner-strewn world tells
To the drowned, where the large wave swells,
To the buried, where the winds whistle in the deep wells,
To the dead, where the lizard listens to the bells.
Crash and clang. The dead world makes noise,
The creaking, metallic run where the passive experience their joys
On the train, after it leaves the station. The hearts
That were there, go home, and, in fits and starts,
Wish for the journey to start back again
So the return might be able to return again.
We went there, again, to the toad in the fen,
To the frog in the lake.
They listen for you—forgotten, for my sake.
I cannot place your eye.
A poem falls to the bottom of the lake
In a capsule, warm and dry.
