[Down from another planet they have settled to mend]

By Josephine Miles 1911–1985 Josephine Miles

Down from another planet they have settled to mend

The Hampton Institute banisters. They wear bow ties and braces.

The flutings they polish with a polished hand.

Wingless, they build and repair

The mansions of what we have thought to be our inheritance.

Caution and candor they labor to maintain.

They are out of phase. I prepare

To burn all gentle structures, greek or thatch,

Under the masterful torch of my president here and abroad,

Till stubble outsmolders, and muslim and buddhist crack

In the orbit of kiln.

A smoke

To some calm Christian plant will drift,

To where they are mendijng their mansions, beside of whose doors

They are standing at ease, they are lifting the fans

Of unburdenable wings.

Josephine Miles, “[Down from another planet they have settled to mend]” from Kinds of Affection. Copyright © 1967 by Josephine Miles. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Source: Kinds of Affection (Wesleyan University Press, 1967)

Biography

Lifelong California resident Josephine Miles distinguished herself as an educator, spending her entire academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was the first woman to be tenured in the English department. She is remembered as the editor of anthologies and critical texts, as an author of books on poetic style and language, and as an award-winning poet who produced over a dozen books of poems. Her . . .

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