Isolation
Yes: I’m in my cage.
“freedom”
I shouted from the walls on the hill.
The echoing voice laughed shrill
Ee dumb
Ee dumb
Ee dumb
“leave alone!” cried the stones.
“The stars are too far,
And the moon’s
Not around
As the clock calls us all to lunch
And eats us.”
The bugs giggle in the grass,
But the snake is stern.
A breeze passes through and is gone
From my soul.
It leaves me staring at the stones
All alone but together,
Building the walls of my cage on the hill.
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground,
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
