Arise, These Stones Sleeping in a Field

Stones Sleeping in a Field

The Sleepers

James Hart 

We found our valleys
full of love’s voluptuous languor,
sunlight folded among the hills,
corpulent mist drowsing in the dusk,
and left the sleepers to their sleep.

We found our bones
full of moonlight’s airy marrow,
starlight folded among the hills,
somnolent mist dreaming in the dark,
and left the sleepers to their sleep.

We felt old infinities fall
under night’s supernal pall;
we rose before the nimble dawn
and found the sleepers gone.

(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled In the Countryside of the Dead)