TO THE STONE-CUTTERS
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
from Tamar (1920-1923) Source
A poem, a good poem,
takes some of the chaos of life and orders it,
contains it for a moment.
— Louis Jenkins
