The Quarry

The Dead

The Dead To what can dust, to what does ash aspire? Once they were wakeful. They would leap from bed, Hearing a siren sound the midnight sky. A flood, a fire! but let the siren sound: They’re lost in a silence lichen underlie. Their tongues have taken root. They neither whisper In the spring breeze, nor howl if winter come. Where are they now, whose syllables were once As many as the aspen’s? All struck dumb? All, all are altered here. Logicians leave Their logic off, concluding in a sigh. The statesmen here view nothing with alarm. Here gossips hush. Here politicians lie. Gossips, good night: your tongues have been translated Into the common language of the weather. You city fathers, pillars all, lie down: For fathers like the pillows lichen feather. Above, the sun swims in its lake of blue. It dusts the goldenrod, these autumn days. It swells the onion, bursts the milkweed pod, And fills the sumac’s ruddy tongues with praise. But lichen spread a silence like a map Of an unseen terrain, in rust and gray: One you have entered: and the lichen lack A fingerpost to point you on your way. 37 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...