Poems By Arjava

[A RENDERING OF XAVIER DE MAGALLON'S LINES, IN "l' Ombre" ON HIS SON, A FLYING OFFICER WHO WAS KILLED IN THE WAR]

LOVELY dawns return not of long ago :

Fair were the two striplings-yourself and day

Who together rose to the quickened sun;

Then the sun and you in the echoing air

Redolent, purified with dew, together

Linked your ways like comrades, sleep left behind.

I unlatch my window as in days gone by,

Letting in pellucid dawn-litanies ;

Cerement drops from newly-arisen day ;

Morning reappears on the sad hill-tops—

Dark is he, now dragging un companioned steps.