Sometimes I must be silent
Sometimes I must be silent.
I read the pain
behind the eyes
that words can’t reach,
and shift my sympathy
through smiling greeting.

Sometimes I must be silent

This is my pain-
their search for meaning
in a stop-watch life
where leaping hope
had once been dancing
but now is still.

Sometimes I must be silent

I have been there-
faced four times
the scrutiny of death
but still can laugh,
jumping the stream of life
on boulders of occurrence.
This is too much
for those who suffer still.

Sometimes I must be silent



Oxford
Have you watched an Oxford autumn
fall in folds about September's feet?
and have your reminiscent thoughts
watched copper dropping in the evening street?

Do you hold within your backward glance
the curving High?
The lift of great traditions
to a  reverent sky?   
The shouting past that forces every sculpted stone
to voice its cry?
And do the bells of Sunday mornings
drench your spirit yet?
Oxford, in autumn - can you quite forget?

I see…
I see the phantom-dancing of the wind,
the pulse of feyered seas, .
the painful growth of leaves
that burst convulsively
from buds on quickening trees.
What if I see all this
yet walk through life
glance-held and blind with pride,
crushing the sorrows of the heart
that silent eyes can hide?

Calms and Storms

Some wear away in calms; some are carried away
in storms...   
God give us grace to fit an. prepare ourselves for
that necessity'.
- Sir Thomas Browne.

Some wear away in calms-
in the beat, beat, beat
of silent years,
and the fall of dust.
The moment nears
with the breath
of age grown sharp with the chill of Death
which puffs the flake of life
far, far from the earth's expectant crust.
Some whirl away in storms
in the stem, stark jerk
of trigger pressed,
or the sweep of flame
or the swirling crest
of fever-wave,
that breaks across its chosen grave,
and lies dead on the dead.   
Up, up springs the life Death could, not claim.

Some wear away in calms,
and some in storms
are snatched away,
and we go slowly on
looking on and weeping on
their passing,
one by one.   
But they, in fields of green, by waters sweet,
Have won their stillness and their joy complete.

This was written an hour before 'the assassination of President Kennedy.