Atropos
by ERIC WILSON BARKER
You were the ominous Cloud-Mouth that foretold,
With Eden’s closing, how all gates would close
On gardens where the trees of pleasure grew.
You were the doom through Joshua’s trumpets rolled;
Goliath’s ruin waiting in a brook;
Lot’s wife’s salt-glazing, backward-turning look;
That Christ-forgetting tree Iscariot chose.
You were the sum Ecclesiastes knew,
Who loved Fall’s rusting drift, its homing sound,
And the Dark Lover waiting in the ground.
With Eden’s closing, how all gates would close
On gardens where the trees of pleasure grew.
You were the doom through Joshua’s trumpets rolled;
Goliath’s ruin waiting in a brook;
Lot’s wife’s salt-glazing, backward-turning look;
That Christ-forgetting tree Iscariot chose.
You were the sum Ecclesiastes knew,
Who loved Fall’s rusting drift, its homing sound,
And the Dark Lover waiting in the ground.