mysteries of sleep and death,
Of love and birth.
There are faces hungry for smiles, and starving fingers
Reaching for dreams.

And like a memory are the wind-swept chords of night,
And the wide melody of evening sky
Where gleams
A colour like the echo of a horn.
There is a far hill where winds die,
And over the hill lies music yet unborn.

VI

Maura lies dead at last,
The body she gave to child and lover
Now feeds flower and tree.

Earth's arms are wide to her. What breast
Offers such gentle sleeping?
Her limbs lie peacefully.

From the dark West
There comes a note like the echoing cry
Of one who rides through the dusk alone
After the hunt sweeps by.

It fades--the night wind is forlorn--
Music is still,
But Maura has followed the silver horn
Over the distant hill,
Over the hill where all winds die.

November Dusk

Where like ghosts of verdant days
Whispering down,
Leaves in the November dusk
Drift and drown,

Stand two lovers, motionless
And apart
In their sturdy nakedness
Of the heart,

Two dark figures, side by side
Through the mist
Standing as though time had died
Since they kissed,

Whose deep roots, alive and sound
Blindly reach
Mingling in the fertile ground
Each with each--

Pray that we, when gaunt and old
Like bare trees
Through our common earth may hold
Close, like these!

Winter Valley

I

Grey grasses drown
in thin brown water
Wound like a chain on the valley's
Sunken breast.

Fallen leaves on the stream
Float motionless--rest--
So secretly the pale
Water winds around
Toward hidden pools,

Or sinking in the earth
Is drowned.

II

Curved crimson stems,
Thorny fingers of vine,
Reach toward the wind.

Sunlight, thin and cold,
Touches them--they shine.

Nothing passes for thorns to hold--
Red thorns,
Catching at shadows of the wind.

III

Silence in the valley,
Silence without wings--

Like the caught breath
Of an unspoken word
When no words come.

Withered reeds, and thin brown water
Above the reeds
Are dumb.

IV

For what are you waiting, winter valley,
Withered valley, brown with reeds?
You are hushed with waiting.

You are old with secrets,
You are tranquil with forgetting.

You are harsh with thorns
Of fruits lon