As though it were reluctant to be day, <br />.......Morning deploys a scale <br />.......Of rarities in gray, <br />And winter settles down in its chain-mail, <br /> <br />Victorious over legions of gold and red. <br />......The smokey souls of stones, <br />......Blunt pencillings of lead, <br />Pare down the world to glintless monotones <br /> <br />Of graveyard weather, vapors of a fen <br />.......We reckon through our pores. <br />.......Save for the garbage men, <br />Our children are the first ones out of doors. <br /> <br />Book-bagged and padded out, at mouth and nose <br />.......They manufacture ghosts, <br />.......George Washington's and Poe's, <br />Banquo's, the Union and Confederate hosts', <br /> <br />And are themselves the ghosts, file cabinet gray, <br />.......Of some departed us, <br />.......Signing our lives away <br />On ferned and parslied windows of a bus.<br /><br />Anthony Evan Hecht<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/curriculum-vitae-2/
