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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=343767" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Cross-Roads</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A bullet through his heart at dawn. On the table a letter signed<br>with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the house,<br>and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through the windows,<br>cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,<br>creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.<br>A glaze of thin yellow sunlight on the staring eyes. Wind howling<br>through bent branches. A wind which never dies down. Howling, wailing.<br>The gazing eyes glitter in the sunlight. The lids are frozen open<br>and the eyes glitter.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The thudding of a pick on hard earth. A spade grinding and crunching.<br>Overhead, branches writhing, winding, interlacing, unwinding, scattering;<br>tortured twinings, tossings, creakings. Wind flinging branches apart,<br>drawing them together, whispering and whining among them. A waning,<br>lobsided moon cutting through black clouds. A stream of pebbles and earth<br>and the empty spade gleams clear in the moonlight, then is rammed again<br>into the black earth. Tramping of feet. Men and horses.<br>Squeaking of wheels.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Whoa! Ready, Jim?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'All ready.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Something falls, settles, is still. Suicides have no coffin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Give us the stake, Jim. Now.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pound! Pound!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'He'll never walk. Nailed to the ground.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An ash stick pierces his heart, if it buds the roots will hold him.<br>He is a part of the earth now, clay to clay. Overhead the branches sway,<br>and writhe, and twist in the wind. He'll never walk with a bullet<br>in his heart, and an ash stick nailing him to the cold, black ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Six months he lay still. Six months. And the water welled up in his body,<br>and soft blue spots chequered it. He lay still, for the ash stick<br>held him in place. Six months! Then her face came out of a mist of green.<br>Pink and white and frail like Dresden china, lilies-of-the-valley<br>at her breast, puce-coloured silk sheening about her. Under the young<br>green leaves, the horse at a foot-pace, the high yellow wheels of the chaise<br>scarcely turning, her face, rippling like grain a-blowing,<br>under her puce-coloured bonnet; and burning beside her, flaming within<br>his correct blue coat and brass buttons, is someone. What has dimmed the sun?<br>The horse steps on a rolling stone; a wind in the branches makes a moan.<br>The little leaves tremble and shake, turn and quake, over and over,<br>tearing their stems. There is a shower of young leaves,<br>and a sudden-sprung gale wails in the trees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The yellow-wheeled chaise is rocking - rocking, and all the branches<br>are knocking - knocking. The sun in the sky is a flat, red plate,<br>the branches creak and grate. She screams and cowers, for the green foliage<br>is a lowering wave surging to smother her. But she sees nothing.<br>The stake holds firm. The body writhes, the body squirms.<br>The blue spots widen, the flesh tears, but the stake wears well<br>in the deep, black ground. It holds the body in the still, black ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Two years! The body has been in the ground two years. It is worn away;<br>it is clay to clay. Where the heart moulders, a greenish dust, the stake<br>is thrust. Late August it is, and night; a night flauntingly jewelled<br>with stars, a night of shooting stars and loud insect noises.<br>Down the road to Tilbury, silence - and the slow flapping of large leaves.<br>Down the road to Sutton, silence - and the darkness of heavy-foliaged trees.<br>Down the road to Wayfleet, silence - and the whirring scrape of insects<br>in the branches. Down the road to Edgarstown, silence - and stars like<br>stepping-stones in a pathway overhead. It is very quiet at the cross-roads,<br>and the sign-board points the way down the four roads, endlessly points<br>the way where nobody wishes to go.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A horse is galloping, galloping up from Sutton. Shaking the wide,<br>still leaves as he goes under them. Striking sparks with his iron shoes;<br>silencing the katydids. Dr. Morgan riding to a child-birth over Tilbury way;<br>riding to deliver a woman of her first-born son. One o'clock from<br>Wayfleet bell tower, what a shower of shooting stars! And a breeze<br>all of a sudden, jarring the big leaves and making them jerk up and down.<br>Dr. Morgan's hat is blown from his head, the horse swerves, and curves away<br>from the sign-post. An oath - spurs - a blurring of grey mist.<br>A quick left twist, and the gelding is snorting and racing<br>down the Tilbury road with the wind dropping away behind him.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The stake has wrenched, the stake has started, the body, flesh from flesh,<br>has parted. But the bones hold tight, socket and ball, and clamping them down<br>in the hard, black ground is the stake, wedged through ribs and spine.<br>The bones may twist, and heave, and twine, but the stake holds them still<br>in line. The breeze goes down, and the round stars shine, for the stake<br>holds the fleshless bones in line.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Twenty years now! Twenty long years! The body has powdered itself away;<br>it is clay to clay. It is brown earth mingled with brown earth. Only flaky<br>bones remain, lain together so long they fit, although not one bone is knit<br>to another. The stake is there too, rotted through, but upright still,<br>and still piercing down between ribs and spine in a straight line.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yellow stillness is on the cross-roads, yellow stillness is on the trees.<br>The leaves hang drooping, wan. The four roads point four yellow ways,<br>saffron and gamboge ribbons to the gaze. A little swirl of dust<br>blows up Tilbury road, the wind which fans it has not strength to do more;<br>it ceases, and the dust settles down. A little whirl of wind<br>comes up Tilbury road. It brings a sound of wheels and feet.<br>The wind reels a moment and faints to nothing under the sign-post.<br>Wind again, wheels and feet louder. Wind again - again - again.<br>A drop of rain, flat into the dust. Drop! - Drop! Thick heavy raindrops,<br>and a shrieking wind bending the great trees and wrenching off their leaves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Under the black sky, bowed and dripping with rain, up Tilbury road,<br>comes the procession. A funeral procession, bound for the graveyard<br>at Wayfleet. Feet and wheels - feet and wheels. And among them<br>one who is carried.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bones in the deep, still earth shiver and pull. There is a quiver<br>through the rotted stake. Then stake and bones fall together<br>in a little puffing of dust.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like meshes of linked steel the rain shuts down behind the procession,<br>now well along the Wayfleet road.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He wavers like smoke in the buffeting wind. His fingers blow out like smoke,<br>his head ripples in the gale. Under the sign-post, in the pouring rain,<br>he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down<br>the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it. It flickers<br>among the trees. He licks out and winds about them. Over, under,<br>blown, contorted. Spindrift after spindrift; smoke following smoke.<br>There is a wailing through the trees, a wailing of fear,<br>and after it laughter - laughter - laughter, skirling up to the black sky.<br>Lightning jags over the funeral procession. A heavy clap of thunder.<br>Then darkness and rain, and the sound of feet and wheels.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Amy+Lowell">Amy Lowell</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=343767" data-title="The Cross-Roads de Amy Lowell" data-description="A bullet through his heart at dawn. On the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up..."></div>
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