Children picking up our bones <br />Will never know that these were once <br />As quick as foxes on the hill; <br /> <br />And that in autumn, when the grapes <br />Made sharp air sharper by their smell <br />These had a being, breathing frost; <br /> <br />And least will guess that with our bones <br />We left much more, left what still is <br />The look of things, left what we felt <br /> <br />At what we saw. The spring clouds blow <br />Above the shuttered mansion house, <br />Beyond our gate and the windy sky <br /> <br />Cries out a literate despair. <br />We knew for long the mansion's look <br />And what we said of it became <br /> <br />A part of what it is ... Children, <br />Still weaving budded aureoles, <br />Will speak our speech and never know, <br /> <br />Will say of the mansion that it seems <br />As if he that lived there left behind <br />A spirit storming in blank walls, <br /> <br />A dirty house in a gutted world, <br />A tatter of shadows peaked to white, <br />Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.<br /><br />Wallace Stevens<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-postcard-from-the-volcano/
