Silver On The Tree Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I cannot think anymore, as happy as if’
I were with a woman, in the banking of the
Higher earths, amidst the alabaster aspens,
The columns for the celebrations
Of the cast of angels,
For in the blanketing nimbus,
The rosy swirl like that of the seashell’s
Inner ear, the peaceful colloquialisms
Of people who live so near the sea
They cannot tell their lives apart from
The otter’s clever play in seaweed beds,
For it is all of one season now,
The clever dating calendars give no hope:
And holidays could come at anytime,
Or none at all,
As the ancient berths of maritime traders
Trundle upwards in the darkness,
And horse-like skeletons split the
Infant grave, braying in the gray snows
As the wolves clean off the last
Of the clever meat, riding them:
The clock has wound down, and
The laughing man on top of it has
Breathlessly drunken his tasteless wine
And let us in:
Through the secret corridors where changing
Maidens run, the sea is butchered
By a dull sword and makes no sound.
There is silver on the tree
At the end of the path a long ways down,
Where not a single thing moves
At the foot of the house.
The ladies of aristocracy with ruined names
Have drunken their poisons under the lee,
And now sleep with a bluish sheen,
The opal necks rotting the speechless marble.
In this world,
How can you say a single thing
And not be driven away by the stockless kind.
As the heroes have risen up victoriously
Many times, now they grow old
And the greatest worm comes,
A long crimson train chewing coal,
So there is nothing to be done now,
As we are old and cotton haired,
Given over to the infant’s nameless whisperings,
But to open the door and let it in.