In the park a
poy
and
girl
stopped under oaks
and revolved the names: of the city, its streets, this park,
the long dead owners' names, their races
sunk in quiet shadow, fireflies and empty streets,
this black paving or ground.
Shouts of children, dwarfed
in the vast pleasure of coming night.
Arc, fall, thud, splash of balls and swimmers' bodies.
Evening, the eyes, the coolness of young skin
shining near water: such evening was your temple,
temple of pure distance, stones crumbled to their vacant form.
It
was you glimmering, you the statue there.
Men in troops passed in through high burning metal doors,
hammers the strength of a thousand could never lift
fell in order, they felt that thumping in the ground
in their frames, a surer heart.
And here you were faintly smiling, not forgotten,
impassive, choked with prayers, worn by hands.
It
was you who gave yourself up, your brow painted
with stars and massifs of cloud, your dance and voice
of frog and snake, cricket and locust, your age
more ancient, younger than the naked August night.
Without a cry you gave yourself up, with your memories
of a people from far away, strange minds that built this place:
some were stunned at the fading, the mercy,
the strengthlessness of your memories.
The whole injustice of the earth - isn't it here? -
the whole failure of the blessing, in this wooden calm
of faces, walls, obscure
spaces, passion, peace. Too happy
for oracles, a father's or a mother's voice
mixed with gray slime and mist where childhood's stream
bleeds from the ground, you still were blessed with peace
by the one unknown.
