Under the Trees

John Rodker

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 débris 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.