The Mocking
(In Memoriam, E.N.)
On a March morning,
Poplars made grey smudge at street end;
Soiled cloud sheeted sky,
And each step woke
Idiot crackle of ice.
Then a cold knife was turned in the side;
The knife of the knowledge of death
(Yet blood did not flow).
I knew that at Vence,
France, a friend had died.
The hand was stilled,
The eye, lidded; their indentures
To beauty, terminated.
Corruption closeted in a casket
Cancelled the artist’s skill.
— All, then, all metaphors,
All epigrams,
Pleas, panegyrics and denunciations,
Addressed to the queller of breath, became meaningless,
In the sound of the closing of doors.
Then were Paul and Millay put to mock;
Donne and Stevens — all the bright expositors:
Mocked by the cold knife,
The wind with its pressure of grave mould,
And the dead, who walk and walk.
~~
Goodridge MacDonald (1897-1967)
from Recent Poems, 1957
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
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