Momus

Momus is the name men give your face,
The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle 
Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, 
Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray 
Against horizons purple, silent 

Yes, Momus, 
Men have flung your face in bronze 
To gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk 
They were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth, 
Gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom,
All your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones 
Thrown over and through with a smile that forever wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone into dreams, by God 

I wonder, Momus, 
Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look with deep laughter 
On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history 
A droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from your kindliness of bronze, 
You give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple, silent, 
Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves,
Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women 
Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears,
And blood drops of undiminishing war