Under the Trees / John Rodker

Under the Trees


I sit, a stone. Empty, black, diffuse; one with this spongy mould and quiet. I sit, bleak and friable, and a wind whistles itself quietly into distance. And the trees chink the fairy gold, which is so thin, so cold, so immeasurably remote. All is become metallic— Salt—bitter—very still. Inert I sit. And all the debris of ten thousand years snows me under. Godlike, inert, bleak and friable, porous like black earth, I sit— where quietly pitters the ruin of ten thousand years.