It Is Not That Death Comes, But

Men Had Reached Into The Scrub And Along Its Boundaries, Had Snatched What They Could Get And Had Gone Away, Uneasy In That Vast Indifferent Peace; For A Man Was Nothing, Crawling Ant-like Among The Myrtle Bushes Under The Pines. Now They Were Gone, It Was As Though They Had Never Been. The Silence Of The Scrub Was Primordial. The Wood-thrush Crying Across It Might Have Been The First Bird In The World-or The Last.

Now He Understood. This Was Death. Death Was A Silence That Gave Back No Answer.

Sorrow Was Like The Wind. It Came In Gusts.

Sift Each Of Us Through The Great Sieve Of Circumstance And You Have A Residue, Great Or Small As The Case May Be, That Is The Man Or The Woman.

You Can't Change A Man, No-ways. By The Time His Mummy Turns Him Loose And He Takes Up With Some Innocent Woman And Marries Her, He's What He Is.