Equinox

Now tilts the sun his monument,

now sags his raw unwritten stone

deep in October’s diamond clay.

And oozy sloes like flies are hung

malignant on the shrivelled stem,

too late to ripen, or to grow

Now is the time the wasp forsakes

the rose born like a weakly child

of earth-bed’s pallor, death-bed’s flush.

Time when the gourd upon the ground

cracks open kernel or decay

indifferent to man or worm.

Time of no violence, when at last

the shocked eye clears the battlefield

and burns down black the roots of grass.

And finds the prize of all its pain,

bedded in smoke, on leaves of blood -

love’s charcoal cross, unlost, unwon.