Morning, in This City

THE ash sinks in the pit, and the morning smolders.
This is the city of memory (that deceived thing
That feeds like a dream on air, and does not grow older):

This is the city of haze. No sound will sting
This morning stooping like smoke on the frost and water.
On the leaves outside the wall — on the stone within —

There are water and frost, and the sun is not remembered.
It was always so, this was never a city of men,
Nor was anything ever built, or destroyed, or assembled;

Nothing was ever shaped except by wind
Here, and the gray towers stood always as gritty
As rock. They are rock again.

It was always like this, in the morning, in this city.
Now pigeons pace on the cornice stones and sway
To air, and return; they are pious and mild with beauty.

They do not even turn their heads to the cold day
Where a gull leafs through a crumbling windy shoulder
Of air and whirls on and up: on up into the slatting sky:

Pigeons are lowly birds. They are silent; they do not sing.
There is no need to sing, for nothing is new.
This is the city of memory, in which always the heart is calm and could be true
Forever — to anything.