Robert Frosts's Bequest

It's back... unsought... that cold, wet lump within the mind, that Frost had known so well. It bids me close my eyes look at my hands-- then open them, repelled; they do not sculpt as his, nor dare to hold the clay. His day enlightened yet by suns still burning down upon the coverlet of sod that will not seal the eloquence of his poetic grace. It is I who ill affords the privilege of suffering--the light beneath my stone, the brightness of a legend in my youth, the triumph of the one who found in loss poetic deity, who flashed the image of his mind to me behind the rostrum on that day with JFK. It is the gnarled earth he leaves upon our pedestal, to grope and turn, and turn away, remembering the wall, the woods, the whiteness of the birches— the man who loved the clay, installed it in our consciousness as one who used remembering to guide his hands, his pen, and mine; then I may close my eyes and see. ~