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 debris 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.