HEART’S ACRE

(From Twilight Clear, also appeared in Valor magazine, Vol2, no.4, Nov, 1951)

There lies a ragged, unkempt yard of graves somewhere,
Beneath whose sod are sleeping all the Unborn Things,
The poignant, futile things, I ever sought to do.

And hid below kind willows tilt the motley stones
That mark each eager aspiration of the past,
With brave but mossy fronts awaiting deeds anew.

There are great mausoleums in that Acre Old,
That cost much rock for august walls and portals grim,
And years of strain and weeks of sleepless wrack,

But like the smallest, thinnest stone the Briers of Time
Creep up and work their havoc at no lesser pace
Than any corner slate that vines may crack.

I do not wander often in that Vale of Hurt
And never in the sunlight, for each dawn finds
Me greeting still more Noble Hunger as my guest;

I go there in the deep grey eves of hopes forgot,
When worlds and willows weep; perhaps in whisp'ring nights
Or in those border hours that come 'twixt fret and rest.

But when I visit that love-hallowed spot in tryst,
One sweetly solemn thought leaves with me out the gate:
I know I love the smallest, humblest stones the best!