Poems By Arjava

Quest

FROM the dip of a lonely valley there straggles up a hill

A ribbon of beckoning lane sheer to the sky-topped sill:

I would I were up at the sky-turn, viewing the farther side—

Grant that one who is greatly loved in the yonderly valley abide !

I climb through the hours of the morning with a dwindling shadow to drag,

While the steep-up far-off sky-line with the heat haze seems to sag.

Through dim velvet of noon-woven silence trails a tapestries silver of lark,

Slender as tremulous hopings that handles the borders of dark.

But O if beyond that sky -line loom a bare tableland

And a graveyard path between blear rocks on either hand,

With no end to its lonely treading but a skull and a tangle of bones—.

Stars half seen in a roky sky—bat's empty squeak above mere stones.

October 31, 1934-