Anniversaries

By Thomas McGrath 1916–1990 Thomas McGrath

for Don and Henrie Gordon

Forty-odd years ago—

Headlines in the snow—

The jobless scrawled a text for mutineers;

Then history seemed sane,

Though Franco sailed for Spain

And Hitler swore to live a thousand years.

Now Progress, his machine,

Makes water out of wine;

With loaves and paper stuffs the multitude;

For power he milks the sun

To see the cities flame

And drives the Goddess from the sacred wood.

Yet anniversaries

Should have our praise, as trees

Salute the queenly coming of the Spring.

All sacred marriages

Keep evergreen in this:

Coupling with Time, they bind him in a ring.

Though time turns, history moves

As if to prove our loves,

Having no pattern but the one we give.

While countries bleed and burn

Not any shall sleep warm

Unless, good friends, you teach us how to live.

Some nine and forty years,

A pulse-beat of the stars,

Astounds the May Fly’s million generations.

Your middle style of Time

Is suited most to man.

This whispering wrist sustains the dream of nations.

Thomas McGrath, “Anniversaries” from Selected Poems 1938-1988. Copyright � 1988 by Thomas McGrath. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Selected Poems 1938-1988 (1988)

Biography

For some fifty years, the late Thomas McGrath produced a prolific array of titles, encompassing poetry, novels, books for children, and several documentary film scripts, including uncredited work on the eloquent and exhilarating Smithsonian film about the history of flight, To Fly. But McGrath is primarily a poet, and although "important contemporary poets . . . proclaim him as a major voice in American poetry in the last three . . .

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