Elegy for My Father’s Father

Lyrics

He knew in the hour he died That his heart had never spoken In eighty years of days. O for the tall tower broken Memorial is denied: And the unchanging cairn The pipes could set ablaze An aaronsrod and blossom. They stood by the graveside From his bitter veins born And mourned him in their fashion. A chain of sods in a day He could slice and build High as the head of a man And a flowering cherry tree On his walking shoulder held Under the lion sun. When he was old and blind He sat in a curved chair All day by the kitchen fire. Many hours he had seen The stars in their drunken dancing Through the burning-glass of his mind And sober knew the green Boughs of heaven folding The winter world in their hand. The pride of his heart was dumb. He knew in the hour he died That his heart had never spoken In song or bridal bed. And the naked thought fell back To a house by the waterside And the leaves the wind had shaken Then for a child's sake: To the waves all night awake With the dark mouths of the dead. The tongues of water spoke And his heart was unafraid.