James Russell
An Afternoon of Statues
The afternoon suffers in silence
As the train spins the tops of the trees.
The crows are the distant ambassadors
Of the skittish impatience of leaves.
Some birds sculpt a cage for the meadow;
Their Chekhovian spirits have been
Hatching the air round the hillock
Where sit a King and a Queen.
The hammer-like heads of the monarchs
Gaze eyelessly out to fine rain.
Each granite inch of their endless bodies
Will wait in the space they contain
Till the sun melts the mountains like sorbet
Until stone into flesh elides
As a law of organic creation –
That’s how long he will sit at her side.
And now from a distance they tell us –
Their forms wring the meaning out pure –
Black on the skyline the measure:
Endure, endure, endure.
Page(s) 59
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