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Poetry of Eli Siegel

This Is History

When rose petals, sometimes in night, go down through the air of night to grassed earth, green earth,

History is being made, history is not adequate without the doings of roses.

Roses have their ways, and rose petals have, and the fate of roses and rose petals, the leaving by rose petals of their roses, or their staying with their roses, the roses they, by nature’s doing, belong to, is, truly, in history.

It may be that the same night, the same quiet, clean night, rose petals leave roses for earth, ships wash heavily, quietly against heavy, black waves, far out in large seas.

And waves, heavy, black and far, are, also, in history.

History takes in all the beautiful, all the exquisite, all the far; all great and sweet doings.

This is history.

This is history.

From Hail, American Development (Definition Press) © 1926, 1968 by Eli Siegel
Eli Siegel on Beauty
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