55

Cenotaph: A Piece of the Continent,

A Part of the Main

Look: here is the bed whereon he lay,

there the glancing window of his dream.

But where the sudden step-fall memory?

Where the hidden magnitude of him?

His window opens on the wind-blown bight,

the door into a silent alien dawn

where all the dying stars trembling and mute

fade, unmattered by our mocking sun.

Therefore I rise, climbing the long blue road

windy across vast, vacant galaxies,

flinging star-seed upon the frightened void:

those are the rising spiral of the Rose

his invisible, stubborn dance described,

these the planted footsteps of my praise.