METAMORPHOSIS
Rain on the riverfront, grey over grey,
Wheels lock in the traffic lane,
Barge and ferry are losing way,
Storms have silenced the furious plane;
Will Prometheus bound, starve on this rock,
Or, happily, Hercules come back?
Edwin Watkins
THE FALL AT ROCKY RU N
A fish-boy leaping boulders in the run
Where it fell as in Deluge, shamed our clay:
We made a humbler span,
Shook on the bridge that tottered, and our day
Seemed leaden by the daylight in that fall
When light unto his girl
The naked boy fell swaddled as
in
sun;
And sought no comfort at that stranger breast–
But the long jump, and on his swimming arms
Her touch, when water flashed
About their loves. She in the sudden calm
Of light and water saw the lightning move
From the slow clouds, her love
Transfigured in the fall, fail where she watched.
Flowers along the forest in its shade
Turned and turned; on the floor the ancient slime
Shook in birth, and cried.
Flying the wood, the dumb birds in their shame
Struck at the empty air; on the still path
We, witness of that death,
Took up the old hoarse clamor, "Pan
is
dead,"
587
