Restraint Was Advised
i
In Rome’s arenas
Not a trace of blood remains
But in those smooth and august stones
A soft, peculiar light is thrown.
ii
That same light falls
About the Indian’s mounds
Where once he danced and wept
And beat his breast.
iii
The silver lake which holds
The bodies of the dead
Will purify itself; all will be well,
And that prim Queen, Victoria herself,
Should call what bears her name
Pristine.
iv
Do not mourn the children borne
Like corns of wheat
(and filled with light as awns)
To their small biers.
For God has winnowed them from chaff
And he can hold them on his lap.
v
The boy whose legs lay severed
In Sarajevo’s market;
With or without the bone – like cuts of meat –
With time has been removed,
And he lies slumbering;
The psalmist says that all his bones are numbered.
vi
In normalcy, the clime for healing,
Wounds will heal, and time will,
heal them all,
The moon will not bleed nor the sun fall.
Far in the East, through a wall hole
stone by stone,
Trade winds will not cease:
Time’s broom will sweep the bones
From the Gate of Heavenly Peace.