A Hundred Years From Now

POEMS BY JOHN HOLMES

You living, look. It is noontime here and now.
I, dead, when you read this, am young and tall.
I stand. I feel the sunlight on my brow;
The sunlight blinds me from the painted wall.

It is well with me. My early hopes came true.
My poems find their words, my love its love,
My life its work. Is it as well with you?

Here where I am and now the shadows move;
They lengthen always, yet the day is bright.
I have a quiet house with books. I sleep
At night-time not alone, as once I might.
There are no promises that I must keep,
Except to say, I am, and in what way,
And by what skill and will, and at this hour;
Except a desperate vow to split your day
With words of mine that use the pine-root’s power
Under the rock. The time of man is brief.
With the living mind that holds your noontime fast,
Think, as I do, in strong and useless grief:
It was noontime here, and now the noon is past.