Impressions Timothy Strange
Tonight I recall the sounds of uncorrelated words
And when they went back to tiny rooms and cots,
my students shared in that grassy twilight Babel
leaving behind strange impressions in the green-bladed yard
while for 200 miles down gravestones of lost children
like monstrous, deformed grass angels, ghosts of their hour spent there,
rose in mournful clusters of marble and forgotten words,
all I could think was how nice to go home and sit
the voices of the children murmuring in dark graves
in half-light, drinking coffee while the sun disappears,
of the searing sweetness of waking on summer mornings
holding back the trickle of terror that has welled up
to the din and delight of a thousand thousand hours
into the cellar of my brain while that field of grass,
wasted joyfully while supple hands turned into cold stones—
emblazoned with the impressions made by unwary youths, holds down the rising stones of children’s graves underground.
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