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Under the Trees  (1914) 
by John Rodker
from Poetry, January 1916



Under the Trees[]

Man under tree, 2007. Courtesy Little Purls of Wisdom.

Man under tree, 2007. Courtesy Little Purls of Wisdom.


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.


This poem is in the public domain