On Looking At "Grief"

-- A Statue In Washington

The carver's knife must have ground
Cruelly in the alabaster,
Cutting that mouth arching and deep;
And the eyes averted he made,
Downcast with lids of clay;
The mourning orbs were
Gouged tearless cribs,
Empty of yesterday.

To him the stone lips lived,
And, as it were--
Searched his chiseled fingers
For some sustenance lost
As litter beneath the marble floor;
Anchoring down with malachite,
The beloved, love-ed, dead.

He made the shoulders scaffolds
For the resigned, turning arms,
And allowed the pale bare fingers warmth
Between the lonely knees;
The hands weave and twist
Like senseless cloth
Between abandoned looms.

The head he hung beneath a veil,
So as to roll, denying, to and fro
(Remembrance begins in saying no!
Let the past again be so.)
For the mind is:
-- the last to disbelieve
-- the last to let go.