The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us mingled with rain

 The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain .
 .
 .

It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.

We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.


The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow .
 .
 .

One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.


One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.

He sings of a house he lived in long ago.

It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.

And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him,
And throwing him pennies, we bear away
A mournful echo of other times and places,
And follow a dream .
 .
 .
 a dream that will not stay.


Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow;
Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting;
In broken slow cascades.

The gardens extend before us .
 .
 .
 We spread out swiftly;
Trees are above us, and darkness.
 The canyon fades .
 .
 .


And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills .
 .
 .

A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.


We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down;
We close our eyes to music in bright cafees.

We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent.

We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays.


And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...