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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Mark Turbyfill

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Forest of Dead Trees

Mark Turbyfill

I CLIMBED up the rough mountain-side

Through the forest of dead trees.

I touched their smooth, stark limbs,

And learned much of the white beauty of death.

Whose taut, slender thigh was this?

And this, whose gracious throat?

O life, you are not more beautiful

Than this silent, curving death is beautiful!

And Eternity—

I think I heard it cry:

“Centre within centre,

Death or Life,

One am I.”