When you hear a worm bore a bough,
Hum a song or strike timbals;
Don’t think of forms ripened elsewhere;
Don’t think – of death . . .
Pre-Christian this and blissful way
Of creating for oneself soft dalliances,
And hard faith that death: touches beings,
Not circumstances – –
And yet, whatever death has touched,
It’s the backdrop – not essence – that he’s rent,
Barring the moment when he took, but took nothing:
– Man – is death’s elder!