Words for the Chisel (collection)/Threnody in Thin Air

by Genevieve Taggard

Threnody in Thin Air

Have you ever been lost?
Or gone like a ghost
From pillar to post
Afloat like a frost—
Lost, lost on the coast
Of the billowy air—
Have you ever been lost?

Or ever sailed by
Too shaken to cry,
Too quiet to care
For the slow cattle's stare,
Lost, lost in the air,
In the billowy air,
In the wide, wide colorless sky?

I was lost, care not why—
I was doomed, I was done.
And I floated and spun
As dizzily lie
The dots on the sun;
As hither and yon,
Zig-zag and awry
As light and alone
I was lifted and blown
In the wide, wide colorless sky.

You are lost? So am I.
This vague dreamy death,—
This exquisite trance,
Is the first little drift
In the long dreary dance
We shall dance by and by.

Are all lost? Will we lie
Effortless, prone
On the shapes of the sky?
Will we crumble with stone
Scatter with hail,
In the wind that goes on,
Past nothingness blown,
To column the pale
Pearl edges of cloud,—
Bellow aloud,
And shatter and batter and tear
The colorless air.

Past stars, the last sun,
I was witness of one
Pale universe, crossed
With little sparks, poured
Past sunlight's great sword,
On nothingness, lost. . . .
—Saw and was lost.

For this, for sheer sight,
For this I went far,
Went out with the light
Of an opening star,
And saw peering, where
Turned circles of air,
The billowy air,
The wide, wide colorless sky.

Peeped beyond dream;
Looked far beyond
These planets and found
The last zone of all
The level, the tall
Great colorless bourne. . . .

—So to return
With nothing,—to know
We are tiny moths . . . O,
We are lost, you and I,
We are doomed, we are done,
As anyone is
Who stares at the sun. . . .

We have stared at the sun,
We are doomed, we are done,
We have floated and spun
As dizzily lie
The dots on the sun,—

Spinning, we spun,
As hither and yon,
Zig-zag and awry,
As light and alone
We were lifted and blown
In the wide, wide colorless sky. . . . .