Sculptor

To his house the bodiless

Come to barter endlessly

Vision, wisdom, for bodies

Palpable as his, and weighty.

Hands moving move priestlier

Than priest's hands, invoke no vain

Images of light and air

But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone.

Obdurate, in dense-grained wood,

A bald angel blocks and shapes

The flimsy light; arms folded

Watches his cumbrous world eclipse

Inane worlds of wind and cloud.

Bronze dead dominate the floor,

Resistive, ruddy-bodied,

Dwarfing us.

Our bodies flicker

Toward extinction in those eyes

Which, without him, were beggared

Of place, time, and their bodies.

Emulous spirits make discord,

Try entry, enter nightmares

Until his chisel bequeaths

Them life livelier than ours,

A solider repose than death's.