Allen Tate

19 November 1899 - 9 February 1979 / Winchester, Kentucky

Sonnets Of The Blood V

Our elder brother whom we had not seen
These twenty years until you brought him back
From the cyclonic West, where he had been
Sent by the shaking fury in the track
We know so well, wound in these arteries:
You, other brother, I have become strange
To you, and you must study ways to seize
Mortality, that knows how to derange
Corpuscles for designs that it may choose;
Your blood is altered by the sudden death
Of one who of all persons could not use
Life half so well as death. Let's look beneath
That life. Perhaps hers only is our rest-
To study this, all lifetime may be best.
142 Total read