Home > Work > The Complete Poems
1 " There are no stars tonight but those of memory. "
― Hart Crane , The Complete Poems
2 " The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower… The commodious, tall decorum of that sky Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower. "
3 " My Grandmother's Love Letters"There are no stars tonight But those of memory. Yet how much room for memory there is In the loose girdle of soft rain.There is even room enough For the letters of my mother's mother, Elizabeth, That have been pressed so long Into a corner of the roof That they are brown and soft, And liable to melt as snow. Over the greatness of such space Steps must be gentle. It is all hung by an invisible white hair. It tremble as birch limbs webbing the air.And I ask myself:"Are your fingers long enough to play Old keys that are but echoes: Is the silence strong enough To carry back the music to its source And back to you again As though to her?"Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand Through much of what she would not understand; And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roofWith such a sound of gently pitying laughter. "
4 " There's nothing like this in the world,' you say, knowing I cannot touch your hand and look too, into that godless cleft of sky where nothing turns but dead sands flashing. '--And never to quite understand! "
