Niggers Leap, New England

At last it came into her mind, the answer

She dressed the children, went out and hailed the driver

There she sat holding them; looking through the window;

Behaving like any woman, but she was no longer living.

To blame her would mean little; she had her logic

The contained argument of the bomb, not even tragic,

To which each day had made its small addition

Ending at last in this, which was completion.

There was no moon, but she had brought her torch

And the dark of the mountain forest opened like flesh

Before her purpose; possessed and intent as any lover

She fled along the path, the children with her.

So reaching the edge at last, and no less certain

She took her children in her arms because she loved them

And jumped, parting the leaves and the nights curtain.

Now, and for years to come, that path is seared

By the blazing headlong torrent of their direction;

And we must hold our weathercock minds from turning

into its downward gale; towards destruction

Beside his heavy-shouldered team

thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,

he weathered all the striding years

till they ran widdershins in his brain:

Till the long solitary tracks

etched deeper with each lurching load

were populous before his eyes,

and fiends and angels used his road.

All the long straining journey grew

a mad apocalyptic dream,

and he old Moses, and the slaves

his suffering and stubborn team.

Then in his evening camp beneath

the half-light pillars of the trees

he filled the steepled cone of night

with shouted prayers and prophecies.

While past the campfire's crimson ring

the star struck darkness cupped him round.

and centuries of cattle-bells

rang with their sweet uneasy sound.

Grass is across the wagon-tracks,

and plough strikes bone beneath the grass,

and vineyards cover all the slopes

where the dead teams were used to pass.

O vine, grow close upon that bone

and hold it with your rooted hand.

The prophet Moses feeds the grape