What Way

At the table, at the grave not knowing

whether to grieve or celebrate, they seemed

to find a way within the stalled noon clatter

and the dusk over oily swamps and elder tangle

along a locked stockade of heavy machines,

as the blue heron, looking down, flew farther on.

Nothing dissolved for them the mortal green

and black in transparent power of spacious streams

now gone from earth. The flickering they found,

terror-hope-terror, in fire of sunset clouds

remained unwavering in its progress to night

and day and night. And yet the pleasure they took

in everything did not wear out. The limestone

quarry of a poorer century, lipped in birds

and berries, treasured up, still treasures up,

old rains beneath its surface of dusty jet—

still waits behind their houses on airless nights

to be the dreams and drownings of new children.