What's O'Clock/Time's Acre
TIME'S ACRE
Beat, beat, with your soft, grey feet, Tear at the cold, rough stone. His grave is here, but it's many a year Since the grass on it was mown.
His ears are crumbled to bitter dust, His eyes are a hollow bone. Your twisting hair is bright and fair, But he is under a stone.
Go back again to your own wide tomb, Leave him in peace within His grave that is narrow and shallow and small, There is no room for two between either wall, And the walls are caving in.
There are nests of worms in the underground, And the grass-roots wind across, Like a counterpane to keep out the rain Is the green-eyed, clutching moss.
Go back to your tomb a mile away, Go back through the still bronze door. The arms which are carven upon its front Are there as they were before.
No trace of escutcheon is on this stone, And burdocks have pushed it awry, And the flowers on tiptoe out of his mouth Are staring into the sky.
Over his grave is a moan of wind, And hemlock-trees bow down, And a hemlock cone lies on the stone Stained with smoke from the town.
What have you to do in this dismal place By a dingy, broken stone? He has no hands and he has no face, And bone cannot wed with bone.
You took his flesh and you took his heart, But his bones are his own to keep. Knuckle and straight, he has them all Down in the gravel deep.
Perhaps he laughs with his hard grey mouth, Perhaps he shouts with glee, And cuddles his bones up one by one, And wishes that you could see.
Perhaps he plays jackstones with his bones, And bets how long you will stay. He knows all about those bright bronze doors Waiting a mile away.
For you in the flesh teased him in the flesh And would not let him be, Till you teased him out of his flesh for good And into Eternity.
But what is fire to a living man Is nothing at all to a bone. He lies at ease in the cold and the mold, And he lies at ease alone.
He will be part of the earth in time, You will be only dust, And your carven door will be nothing more Than a heap of eating rust.
So much for your azure fleur-de-lis, And your cross in a chevron d'or.He will be lilies in a morning breeze At the foot of a sycamore.
The world goes round, and the world goes round, And who knows what may come out of the ground When a man is planted under a mound.