Two North Country Poems

The Great Stone Face

No way to outwit the grim-faced mountains, Except by moving upon the earth. Witless work! Late I come back To see them massive in their frames. Twenty-five years is the time of separation.

Little has changed. I think I even Have not changed, and am as far from finality As when, youthful and dour, I trudged On, told the lonely peaks of doubt.

Agility of mind is its own commitment, No victory. The stones are committed to silence, Even as we. The chill, early air of April Is good as when I first knew it in New Hampshire.

Our times are different. Neither escapes The grip of nature. I stand here hale Who stood to these mountains in my twenties. I see no difference in their attitude.

Poems will invent the new possibilities, They speak of the passion of man for victory, For realization, the highest consciousness, Even Christ's. They are pages strewn on the wind. They are purities, like this light-stepping, high air.

"The Great Stone Face" is published here tor the first time.

Burden

Whoever lives beside a mountain knows, Although he dares not speak it out, that he Must always carry on his heart the snows That burden down the trees. And never the sea Will rush around him cool, like snow-cool air, And carry him and lift him like a leaf. He will not find this lightness anywhere Since mountains brood, they hold dark league with grief.

The pine trees never tire of moving down The slopes to meet him, pointing up from town Beyond the tree-line to the rigid peaks. The mountain holds him though it never speaks. He scrambles over boulders on his knees Trying to reach the summit, like the trees.

From Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.