About Jodey Bateman Pablo Neruda Translations by Jodey Bateman Contributors Abuela Musica Jalapeno Peppers Children’s Page Finder Submissions

In Our Now Unlasting Legacies | Poem

In  Our Now Unlasting Legacies


By your brightness,

They shall find thee,

In your whimseys,

In your moods;

Comes the ever-standing-

-O'er the everlasting

Plains of victory-

but hear the glooms!


By the right-stand

In the meadows,

On the dimpled waters-

Of the moon that glows,

In the sighing majesties,

Of the ever-burning light!
On the seashores,

By the waters bickering westward,

Know the dark-side of your House;

Hear the passions fleeting moments,

When the wrens are nesting low,

In the wide-stretched bower branches,

Know the howling in the moon!


These can keep you,

Count them slowly,

In your fingers comes the feeling,

Of the nighthawk circling slowly...

...comes to seek you in your doom!
By the hearthside hear the shadows,

All is fleet and sure of rooms,

Hearts in haunted memories,

With many makers of the Room!

(Know then this hour of singled pain,

The raptures of the burning flame,

All to singe in slowest yearinig,

All your love from out your pain)!!


Awesome moments in the rain,

When the floods pour through your brain,

Know again the wetted flowers,

That so casually once did flatter,

All that now drives down in flame!
Insipid spittle on the tongue,

The hands in pockets wrestle,

All time is gone like flecks of sand,

On the wide and flattened beach,

Comes the gull, sleek, avenging,

All tur turn the tides and waves,


All to turn in splattered heavens,

Heavy drenched . . . the shrieking silence of the day!


- Michael Warren Eliseuson