ELEGY FOR THE LEDYARD BRIDGE

Spanning waters who knew the vanished years, Imaged hills and pine draped windy-meres, Who watched the ill-fated opal of the night Race to escape a warpath's painted light, Stern Ledyard speaks her last to snows For the glister winter dorms and goes, So with the perishing of susurrant sound, Age is shackled neath the humbling mound.

Men the waters walked one hundred years, Their bridge must now succumb to fleers Of riveting science and lengths of steel Whose presence a majesty would repeal, For steel and hills are not one blood Where old determined Wheelock stood, With a Gradus ad Parnassum in his hand Civilizing Amerinds on New Hampshire's strand.

Unharmed, conserve the pillars of a lore For all of living grows about a core; Tradition's artery once destroyed Rises never pure and unalloyed, Though man may lift puissant hand And look to God for deodand. Pause before the axe be sharply ground Lest infamy be granite bound. Portraying an air of vanquished things, Lowering clouds, the rain-crow sings; Roads untrodden soon will batten weeds And the valley portentous silence breeds. The picture clamors within its frame, A mirror-mind unloath to blame Those seeing Connecticut track the sea For conventing Ledvard's memory.

From Ten Introductions, an Anthology, Published by Arrow Edition.