Selected Poems (Aiken)/Exile

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EXILE
These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. CrowsCaw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance,Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreakLights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew,Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracksShow sharply in it, as they might in snow.But it's soon gone in the sun—what good does it do?The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live hereAre small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes.
Bring water with you if you come to live here—Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deepThat one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas.Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing,Mountains of ice. You will have need of theseProfundities and peaks of wet and cold.
Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier,Birds of a golden colour, who will singOf leaves that do not wither, watery fruitsThat heavily hang on long melodious boughsIn the blue-silver forests of deep valleys.
I have now been here—how many years? Years unnumbered,My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved.I brought no bird with me, I have no cisternWhere I might find the moon, or river, or snow.Some day, for lack of these, I'll spin a webBetween two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang thereFace downward, like a spider, blown as lightlyAs ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me.Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.
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