For Elizabeth
On the Poet’s Eleventh Wedding Anniversary
Though you behold me silent in this room,
Know that I walk in fields of fresh-cut hay;
Though I be still, my thoughts like roses bloom
And run with clouds across the vault of day.
The west wind summons me beyond this chair
Where you now see me, seemingly transfixed;
Though closed, my window draws the mountain air
With scent of pine and cedar intermixed.
We twain this mortal clay shall not confine,
Nor seasons circumscribe, nor passing years
Encase eternity. Our stars outshine
The squandered light of this world’s dying spheres:
For love, unbounded, cannot be contained,
Save by that Heart to whom it is ordained.
Festum Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae Poenitentis
Anno MMXVII
Joseph Charles MacKenzie is the first and last American to win First Place in the Long Poem Section of the Scottish International Poetry Competition, Henry M. Austin Poetry Prize.
Just a brief comment. I appreciate the inter-mingling of the personal and the universal in this poem. As if these two beings were alone in the universe. Can’t help wondering about the significance of the ‘West wind,’ and the closed window. Does the narrator smell the pines in his memory? Or has his spirit moved outdoors, beyond the confines of the room?
Yes, these are questions which are very much left to the reader. It is important, however, that you have discerned them.
Dear Sultana– McSkirt flippantly says the questions are very much left to the reader because the writer, (McSkirt, or MacSquirt) can’t honestly answer the questions. One of his alter-egos is James Eliot. He normally uses women; hence McSkirt.