Friday, December 31, 2010

The year ends -- and we go on . . .

Immortal Helix     by Archibald MacLeish  (1892-1982)

HEREUNDER Jacob Schmidt who, man and bones,
Has been his hundred times around the sun. 

His chronicle is endless -- the great curve
Inscribed in nothing by a point upon
The spinning surface of a circling sphere.

Dead bones roll on.

"Immortal Helix" is found in MacLeish's Collected Poems, 1917-1982, (Houghton-Mifflin, 1985).

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