What's O'Clock/Footing up a Total

by Amy Lowell

FOOTING UP A TOTAL

I moved to the sound of gold, and brass, and heavily clashed silver.
From the towers, the watchers see the flags of my coming:
Tall magenta flags
Stinging against a pattern of light blue.
Trumpets and tubas
Exult for me before the walls of cities,
And I pass the gates entangled in a dance of lifted tambourines.

But you—you come only as a harebell comes;
One day there is nothing, and the next your steepled bells are all,
The rest is background.
You are neither blue, nor violet, nor red,
But all these colours blent and faded to a charming weariness of tone.
I glare; you blossom.
Yes, alas! and when they have clanged me to my grave
Wrapped gaudily in pale blue and magenta;
When muted bugles and slacked drums
Have brayed a last quietus;
What then, my friend?

Why, someone coming from the funeral
Will see you standing, nodding underneath a hedge
(Picking or not is nothing).
Will that person remember bones and shouting do you think?
I fancy he will listen to the music
Shaken so lightly from your whispering bells
And think how very excellent a thing
A flower growing in a hedge most surely is.
And so, a fig for rotting carcasses!

Waiter, bring me a bottle of Lachrima Christi,
And mind you don't break the seal.
Your health, my highly unsuccessful confrère,
Rocking your seed-bells while I drift to ashes.
The future is the future, therefore—
Damn you!