Immortality

Must then the living water be stripped from the rock,
the cool, the living water,
tinkling like laughter Into pools?

Is there nothing but the hot, bare rock
livid in the blistering sun
with no shade?

See! The veiled spray is cagerly clutched
by the slim fingers of the hot winds
(mocking, burning wind)
drifts, fades like starlight, and dissolves.

I am afraid of the great gaunt rock
and the breath blown back from the crags,
and there is no shelter from the black sun,
and no water,
no water to ease my searing thirst,
and nothing seems worth the doing.

There Is only the fearful rock,
smooth, imperturbable,
and the flaming breath of the flying winds.

—R.L.M.

Flashes at Night

Stars are less bright
Than these flashes at night
Meteoric roars of the trams as they clash
Through the deep-deft gash
of the tunnel; that break the still
Silence that slept on the hill—
Flashes at night.

Sec them afar;
Like a star
That crosses the firmament's are With a curve and a beam.,
It flashed through the gloom
Of the dusk, as a tomb
Is reft in the death of the dark By a sprite or a dream.

Green lightenings-phantom hosts!
Tindersparks from caverns,
Where glow-worms sit,
Their lamps alit,
Frail mentors of the darkness-woven.
Dashes and flashes-energycrashes—
Spearheads driven—
Flashes from trams,
Strinking from jams,
Of trollies-flashes lashing heaven

—D.M.S.

Fragment

And through the throbbing organmist,
He drifted, and with holy word,
Delivered into trembling hands
The blood and body of Our Lord.

. . . .

And, straddled on the topmost rafter,
A savage watched, and screamed with laughter.

—R.L.M.