Winter in the Ruins - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Winter in the Ruins

 

     That sleepy winter on the Cape,
     we sucked glacial pebbles.
     Sea-wracked waves dragged from the sands
     the porcelain arm of a retired doll.

     The clapboard village kept its ghosts
     at bay in the crook of the bay.
     The seafood shoppe in sight of the sea
     hired a forty-pound lobster as its mascot.

     The old iambic roar raged, sands blowing
     through shattered archways, over toppled
     columns, the hardpan of a Roman road.
     So much of the modern lay before us,

     we could not see it coming.

William Logan is the author of Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods: Poetry in the Shadow of the Past.

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