THE praisers of women in their proud and beautiful poems <br />Naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes <br />Boasted those they loved should be forever remembered <br />These were lies <br />The words sound but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten <br />The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more <br />The sleek throat is gone -and the breast that was troubled to listen <br />Shadow from door <br />Therefore I will not praise your knees nor your fine walking <br />Telling you men shall remember your name as long <br />As lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English <br />Rings from a tongue <br />I shall say you were young and your arms straight and you! <br />mouth scarlet <br />I shall say you will die and none will remember you <br />Your arms change and none remember the swish of your garments <br />Nor the click of your shoe <br />Not with my hand's strength not with difficult labor <br />Springing the obstinate words to the bones of your breast <br />And the stubborn line to your young stride and the breath to your breathing <br />And the beat to your haste <br />Shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men to remember <br />(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost <br />Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation <br />Like dream words most) <br />Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women <br />I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair <br />And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders <br />And a leaf on your hair <br />I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women <br />I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair <br />Till the world ends and the eyes are out and the mouths broken <br />Look! It is there!<br /><br />Archibald MacLeish<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-marble-nor-the-gilded-monuments/
