(b)
Long
back,
on that goat-island, I
Once at dark stood and stared where Europe stank.
Many were soon to die-
From accidie, frolic, depravity, virtue,
Snatched, not knowing the reason, in rank
On rank hurled, on
in
bed, or
in
church, or
Dishing up supper,
Or
in
a dark doorway, loosening the girl's elastic to tup her,
While high in the night sky,
The murderous tear dropped from God's eye;
And faintly fore-feeling, fore-fearing, all
That to fulfill our time, and heart, would come,
I stood on the crumbling wall
Of
that foul place, and my lungs drew in
Scent of dry gorse on the night air of autumn,
And I seized,
in
dark, a small stone from that ruin,
And I made outcry
At the paradox of powers that would grind us like grain, small and
dry.
Dark down, the stone, in its fall,
Found the sea: I could do that much, after all.
Robert Penn Warren
POEM
for Miss Kathleen Hanlon
"I am cherry alive," the little girl sang,
"Each morning I am something new:
I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited
As
the boys who made the Hallowe'en bang:
I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:
When I
like,
if
I
like,
I can
be
someone new,
Some one very
old,
a witch in a zoo:
I can be someone else whenever I think who,
And I
want
to
be
everything sometimes too:
