When each white cloud has reached its destination
Across the cool blue ocean of the sky,
And every rose's crimson conflagration
Of beauty burns to ashes I shall lie
One with the insignificant dust, nor know
In that dark silence how the slow dawns broke
In ripening fires across impatient hills,
Nor how at dusk the ivory moonflowers woke
To claim their little hour. Time will flow
Above me like a wind that stirs and stills
The dust, to still and stir the dust again;
I shall forget all earth, its babbling men,
Remembering only where the dark is deep
That you and I have loved; then I shall sleep.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
Beneath this muted conference of oak
Spreading an emerald heaven overhead,
With gray moss hanging like a phantom smoke
Time counts the timeless hours of the dead.
No spoken word awakes the quiet here,
No footfall save the darkness and the dawn,
No stir save jasmine breathing on the air,
Dropping their dying petals on each stone.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
The day you die I will not come and say:
Poor weary dust, how rested now, at peace,
Nor shed a tear upon that bitter day
Above the new turned earth granting you release.
I will go seeking all you were and find
Dark eyes that I remember where larkspurs blow,
And, listening, pluck your voice from the warm wind
As clearly as a red rose from the snow.
Granite can never capture nor hold you fast;
Forever at my side your steps shall be,
Tracing the paths we knew and loved the best,
And searching restless patterns of the sea
I will find your face in all the tides that run,
Your laughter, defiant, lifting toward the sun.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
When you and I have grown too old for loving
The first slow tide of dawn across the dark,
Too old to pause, bewildered, when a lark
Plunges its arrow of music where we are roving;
When the first rose of April fails to quicken
Our pulse and hold us speechless for a spell
And we are tired, too tired to sit and tell
Love's words again, and watch the bright stars thicken --
When comes that hour and the spirit sighs,
Though still we talk as one who understands,
Feel summer's sunlight and the winter's knife,
Ah, little do we know that all of life
Will lie upon a bier with folded hands
And silent lips, and pennies on its eyes.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
Ah, what a little, little cross to hold
Above this dust your sacrifice, to mark
The unspent moons, the loves foresworn, the bold
High-singing heart you tossed into the dark!
Only the wind remembers where you lie,
Only the wind, this cross and one lone bird
Brushing his wing along the quiet sky,
Singing of spring as though you waked and heard.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
If you should come upon my skeleton
Blanching in marsh or sand
In some far year no calendar now shows,
Pity it not, but touch it with your hand
As you would touch a bird's wing or a rose.
Remember then, in that strange meeting place,
Its walls have harbored well
At their full tide a flood of spring's green days
Fired with the breath of beauty's miracle;
That once, within that emptiness dwelt praise
Of God, of love triumphant no matter how small
The fare it set each hour.
Remember, too, before you turn away
Where loneliness blossoms like a desert flower,
To will me all the peace your lips can say.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
Some day, perhaps, with war laid by,
In brothership, seeing eye to eye,
When armies of the world shall till
The ravished field, the blackened hill,
God will return to earth again,
Peace falling like sunlight over grain,
And calling men from every land,
Divulge the secrets of His hand.
<<|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|><|>>
All poetry by Daniel Whitehead Hicky (1902-1976)
![Hold Back the Dawn [DVD] Charles Boyer; Olivia de Havilland; Paulette Goddard](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AkExBJQsL._SL75_.jpg)
Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 12:44AM 
So the other day -- last Friday, to be exact -- two eleven eleven -- I was hanging out at Greenlawn Memorial Park in Columbia.
