Grey Smoke Giant
A great giant man vanishes from the face of the earth
No help for the hoarse throated cries of his lamenting wife
How will we remember his pastures, like a sea of green?
His children too small to gauze the torment of grief,
Yet how will we remember his sapphire hair and sepia face?
Stripped from the ash of his wall is concealed a hollowness
Felt by the saints, and one flickering, bitter, candle tenders
The execration of his passing.
That sacred sand in whose shadow I have gushed
Gives me pause for he who carried a pocket full of grace
And whose hallowed chalice must have touched the cells of heaven itself.
Oh! How can I reclaim you, restore you, repay you?
MY dancing mercies do not dissolve the blue veil which surrounds
The guilt and warm tears shed for him.
Mass upon mass, benediction upon benediction,
His name celebrated a thousand times
As unseen witnesses regard that great deliverance.
Old and exhausted but uncommonly kind
His white smiles have disappeared.
Without warning save presage from a little box of spells
Resembling many crucifixes on the wall,
And one great stone,
The sky opened up and took him
Like grey smoke rising.
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