Had he known that his adventurous turn
too suddenly away from home
would tantalize him with the image of a life

perpetually lost, then he might have saw,
or in that same dream, reawakened, finally see,
unlike one acquitted by sleep, a picture

of the world without him -- better there
and friendlier the frailties, though nullifying:
what remains of criminals barely forgiven

but a guilt more guilty of than the thirst itself --
a paradise for poor men, consumed
of themselves devotedly as fruit.

The New World

His look, her sigh held strange acquaintance with finality, when, pausing again to articulate the problem, their resignation, appearing to outlast the flesh itself, saw the founding rock become the sharpener: what left was there for maxims to identify, but rubble, its nameless sacrifice for the future -- what dark exactness of feeling,
extracted from a book, was to be found here, with quiet reverence, for the stricken house left behind?