Beyond the last electric bill
Slow days are crumbling into days
Without the unction of farewell.
Tonight there suffers in my street
The passion of the silent clerk
Whose drowned face cries the windows dark
Where once the bone of mercy beat.
I tum; I perish into work.
o
Magus with the leathern hand,
The wasted heart, the trailing star,
Time is your madness, which I share,
Blowing next winter into mind ...
And love herself not there, not there.
Claire McAllister
TWO POEMS
RITES OF AUTUMN
The lights of Autumn grazed across the fields.
Maple leaves that changed behind our backs
Hung luminous around the napes of trees;
A streetlamp, flickering on, destroyed the dusk.
The leaves that dwindled in the north wind waved
To ships we sailed when summer made us brave.
All day the air lay heavy and the fruit
Grew red and round and ripe.
Underbrush lay burning in a ditch
And as the incense circled through the sky
I saw the ascension of the Springtime wish,
And could have wept, but winds were blowing dry.
I thought, the trees ablaze above the street,
Of the gaiety that comes out of defeat,
