A Perfect Country

Death has not come to this country.
These perfect hills were never gentle with sin.
They did not know the drumming of the autumn
Bed with the flaw of love’s experience.

But also in this country
Grown out of time, grown deathless in enormity,
Your words, set down into a snare of violence,
In all crime find their cadence testified.

And darkening into a crimson stillness
The blood creeps softly, sedulously in.
Do you dream then of heaven or of hell
When the muscles of the cliff close in around you?

Or do you dream of the hill’s immaculate pattern
And the expectancy of eager years?
Do you dream of a heart inviolate, merciless,
Which was not hammered into calm and pity?

An Eden never lost is never known.
The white tombs of its sure and settled logic
Tell of all action murdered into stillness
While day eats out each island with disaster.

While only the desolate baying of the blood
And vengeance steals across your private country
Whose clear perfection finds your death unknown.