Long Departures to the Unknown

For thousands and for thousands of our years

The birds have flown away and flown above

Us men and boys.  We don’t drop down our tears

To see those flights.  Since, quite innocent of

Our guilt, the birds abandon us for climes

More beautiful and balmy, we feel slight

Their loss.  An almost heedless sadness chimes

That melancholy faintness can’t ignite.

We feel that people of the eons gone

Would certainly have felt it though they would

Not write about it.  Flights of birds withdrawn

Are like a daydream almost understood.

  They seem as silent voices in the lines

    Of poems which have now been burnt in shrines.