All winter long you listened for the boom <br />Of distant cannon wheeled into their place. <br />Sometimes outside beneath a bombers’ moon <br />You stood alone to watch the searchlights trace <br /> <br /> <br />Their careful webs against the boding sky, <br />While miles away on Munich’s vacant square <br />The bombs lunged down with an unruly cry <br />Whose blast you saw yet could but faintly hear. <br /> <br /> <br />And might have turned your eyes upon the gleam <br />Of a thousand years of snow, where near the clouds <br />The Alps ride massive to their full extreme, <br />And season after season glacier crowds <br /> <br /> <br />The dark, persistent smudge of conifers. <br />Or seen beyond the hedge and through the trees <br />The shadowy forms of cattle on the furze, <br />Their dim coats white with mist against the freeze. <br /> <br /> <br />Or thought instead of other times than these, <br />Of other countries and of other sights: <br />Eternal Venice sinking by degrees <br />Into the very water that she lights; <br /> <br /> <br />Reflected in canals, the lucid dome <br />Of Maria della Salute at your feet, <br />Her triple spires disfigured by the foam. <br />Remembered in Berlin the parks, the neat <br /> <br /> <br />Footpaths and lawns, the clean spring foliage, <br />Where just short weeks before, a bomb, unaimed, <br />Released a frightened lion from its cage, <br />Which in the mottled dark that trees enflamed <br /> <br /> <br />Killed one who hurried homeward from the raid. <br />And by yourself there standing in the chill <br />You must, with so much known, have been afraid <br />And chosen such a mind of constant will, <br /> <br /> <br />Which, though all time corrode with constant hurt, <br />Remains, until it occupies no space, <br />That which it is; and passionless, inert, <br />Becomes at last no meaning and no place.<br /><br />Edgar Bowers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-stoic-for-laura-von-courten/
