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HOMAGES WalterArmistead Remember: not making Memory climb the mind, as he The half-dead rustling-still ofsummer tree, But come, amazed with love, to stand, this hour dissolved Upon him years away, The axe lashed to his wrist. Upright and braced in my head Two hundred yards from me, as then, He sets the tingling arches ofhis feet On two great boughs, and swings. I hear the dead limbs fall, and, At every stroke, like Time to cut him down, An axe within the wood knock back. Those were the years we thought ofbeing men, And we must labor for it, hauling ourselves up ropes, Running long hours in the woods, Swinging our mauls and axes till we shook, And afterwards, our muscles stunned with blood, Coming back to the summer ofthe house, and the room Where, in a harp oflight, the great harp leant. Then he would play Parts ofthe missing music Ofthe dead limbs on the lawn. It was a thing I since have made him say: would not have thought of, then, Walter Armistead / 43 Hearing the sad rippled humming-forth, and forth. Elennennber, rennennber (How nnany years since his death Exploded in air, whose body the earth never reached?) Not so nnuch the knocking ofthe axe Inside the trunk, the answering one, Or the stricken tree that cut the sun Apart, and strewed it powerfully, shook, upon his head, But the loonn ofrain he held between his hands, The strings, the winter ofthe leaves. ForRichard Wilbur In such a trennendous window Seated, the whole rich dark canoe through, And the Arno nnost, we watched and talked And the traffic roared through the vital ruins ofFlorence Beneath, on a narrow street; The river trennbled in golden paints. I thought that either you or I, Or both, could rise fronn the nnossy casennent, And fronn a standing start Could clear the whole wild shaken street To the river, where light felt for its shape. It was a thing to think of: we could do it. But here in the afternnath, In the other heart oftraffic, I sit In the opening Annerican night, and, through you, rennennber That the great wild thing is not seeing All the way in to the center, But holding yourself at the edge, Alive, where one can get a look. Summons / 44 ...

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