I

The centuries speak to the hours,"

I know they give down terrible powers

We spend away.

No wisdom not from sand tine told,

No law we think we prove

By miles we have this year and hold

Is ours to save.

to come and sometime past

We strive, speak, stand,

And pray both ways because we must.

Send. Send.

II

My father remembers with seven springs,

Good water enough for cattle, mill, and house,

And all the summer some for the sake of a brook.

Timber they needed, their grandfathers had grown.

In the deep snow, over deep snow, before spring,

They out it to logs they hauled out to the meadows,

This pine now bedroom walls, this oak the floor.

There would be berries by one field, in one season;

There would be pork, birds, beef, and yellow corn.

I remember his memory of the hardwood they burned

To cure the meat, to store away the smoky days,

Taste of their own ground in the food all year.

III

Imagine it never rained. What if a man turned water on,

Here in the sidewalk, window-plant, and drugstore country,

The streetlamp, hose, and old library part of the country,

And no water oars out of the faucet, all the water was gone?

How do you do? I am dying, thank you. What a nice clearing

After all the rain, I am alone slowly as of course you know,

Hungry inside, like you, and ugly and old this lovely morning.

Do you love me! Can you say so? I try, saying How do you do.

Silence of letters never written slows a day from a day.

All the old, dying old, r remember us very well, but wait.

Absence is one part death, and death almost an absence.

Saying they are not here almost destroys their presence.

What does a man think about no water, feeling time's fire

In the checkbook, child, supper-table part of the country,

Where all he loves is all burning, torar dum prosim:

He consumes himself breathing every day's hours and air,

Where the child says, How much do you love me, tell me.

The man, holding him so tight he feels the young bones

One by one the shape of his own says, Very very much.

The child, Do you? The man, Yes. The child, Tell me, tell me.

IV

Down from the branches of our care,

Out from roots' drive,

From the leaves, boughs, the sure

Fields of our love,

Send, send. From our extra rooms,

From our spare

From the hundreds of books shelved

In us, send, From

The thousands of years of our lives

Send to the new come. come.

From you, us, the middle of our loves,

Spread the gold frame

Till it splits landscape wide

To green for everyone.

But what can be spared is no good.

Give you. You run.

Wear out your shoes and knees running

At night in the cold

To give away your heart's summing

Because someone called.

Flow the bright weather outward

from the shine of mind.

From more than we can, oh toward rThe darkness, send, send.