For That Which Has Fallen

This poem appears in the Fall 2019 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

All Saints

For that which has fallen,
Moisture-seeking crawlers
And palsied hands of leaves
Unclasp summer’s trophies.
For that which has fallen,
The moon’s a beggar’s bowl.
For that which has fallen
Come those who’ve passed over
Beyond the veil of sight
On hieroglyphic feathers
Inscrutable forever,
With light, air, and mist
Tangled gray in branches,
With ghouls that guard our doors,
With olives and horse-chestnuts
In silver dreams and armor—
For that which has fallen
Returns. And as for us,
We wish, we come to see,
To go down, tired or happy,
To that which has fallen.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”