Downfall

by Rudolf Abbe

 

Crematoria had ceased to matter,
Like the foul smell. Who had the right to judge?
Our evenings turned instead to masterworks
Obsequious to man, not to the bounds
Of the expressible. The camps, the war,
Were neither extremity nor passion, for
On a ragged hook upon a wall,
Each body claims that true simplicity
Which no more seeks and so cannot be found.

Yet on the stains that steal
Throughout that world were surely harshnesses
As luminous as painful, and
The calls and murmurs of an endless shore,
Whose architectures weal the grain of time,
Are nowise diminution. I and thou:
I place these two against that same bright ground.