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larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
In Western Mountains (opening section), Glenn Ward Dresbach
He stood a moment at the weathered edge
Of the highest cliff, and looked far out with me
Upon great valleys ending in the haze,
And mountains that from haze drove up a wedge
Of snow in skies of lapis-lazuli.
Then something of the littleness of days
His life could span came to him dizzily;
And he, who boasted of his strength with men,
Turned back and grasped a little cedar tree
Near by, for safety; and he shut his eyes,
Shaken, and would not turn to look again….
Back from that cliff-edge, jutting to the skies,
He crawled, and spoke at last with heavy breath:
“God, what a place! What is it? Life or Death?”
Dresbach (1899-1968) published 11 collections of poetry in the first half of the 20th century, culminating in a 1948 Collected Poems, while working at various jobs as an accountant and banker in the American Southwest and Midwest. I usually only post whole poems but I’ve seen this extract, initially published in Poetry in 1917, in more than one anthology—the full work can be read here, in his 1922 collection In Colors of the West. And, yeah, that effect.
---L.
Subject quote from Matthew 25:21, The Mountain Goats.
In Western Mountains (opening section), Glenn Ward Dresbach
He stood a moment at the weathered edge
Of the highest cliff, and looked far out with me
Upon great valleys ending in the haze,
And mountains that from haze drove up a wedge
Of snow in skies of lapis-lazuli.
Then something of the littleness of days
His life could span came to him dizzily;
And he, who boasted of his strength with men,
Turned back and grasped a little cedar tree
Near by, for safety; and he shut his eyes,
Shaken, and would not turn to look again….
Back from that cliff-edge, jutting to the skies,
He crawled, and spoke at last with heavy breath:
“God, what a place! What is it? Life or Death?”
Dresbach (1899-1968) published 11 collections of poetry in the first half of the 20th century, culminating in a 1948 Collected Poems, while working at various jobs as an accountant and banker in the American Southwest and Midwest. I usually only post whole poems but I’ve seen this extract, initially published in Poetry in 1917, in more than one anthology—the full work can be read here, in his 1922 collection In Colors of the West. And, yeah, that effect.
---L.
Subject quote from Matthew 25:21, The Mountain Goats.