DAVID MCKAY POWELL

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FOUR SHORT POEMS: NE INCAUTUS

I

The mindful design tombs for themselves;
the thoughtful lie in the grass on warm days;
mothers guide babies down long sidewalks,
mothers themselves not long loaned from childhood,
and watch for stars and doors
and beautiful cuts of brick on sunny hillsides,
infant eyes watching and waiting alongside,
longing, themselves, to lie in the grass.

II

We have shaken the hands of evil men;
we have kissed hopeful lips.

Scarcely a god can both love and be wise,

and we love our wisdom
and our hope that we can love reciprocally.
We touch the untouched,
and by wringing our own hands
become lives of less good,
chipped down in hope,
chipping as we fall.

Robins scamper through the grass
on warm afternoons,
chasing smaller creatures,
all before beautiful cuts of brick.

III

Columns and oaks like columns,
statues of great men and students like great men
standing at nighttime,
gazing at bronze faces
and looking into the shadows of eyes
which are like an infinite future imperiled
by the sightless vice of inexperience.

Cool air and a lawn so lush
as to be felt soft through your shirt
as you lay and watch the sky
around the space of branches.

IV

We will not worry:
fortune is left to fortune,
and, in one world, there is one fortune,

so that young women,
guiding infants down sidewalks
in the late afternoon,
can only wait for the next strike
of the clock set in the brick
of a chapel, a tomb built by one
to whom future was a thought for the mindful.