Let us stop Time forever at ten o’clock
On this sunny Sunday morning of October: the neighbors now
Are all at church, and filled with holy thoughts;
The dying snake of the sky has only a feeble sting,
And earth goes deathward in coronation robes;
And death’s next victim, whom we cherish so,
Reads a book in the kitchen rocking-chair;
And the nourishing oven, faintly redolent,
Performs grandmotherly functions by a dial.
Just here to stop Time’s hands ….
But no, and no. No.
The soldier northward in the frozen mud,
The marked quarry on the sterile bed,
The duped checkmated with the shaven head—
These, and others, lack even such oasis,
Ringed with chrysanthemums and the migrant warblers.