This message hastens lest we both go down
Scattered, with no character, to death;
Death is untutored, with an ignorant frown
For precious identities of breath.
But you perhaps will say confusion stood,
A vulture, near the heart of all our kin:
I’ve heard the echoes in a dark tangled wood
Yet never saw I a face peering within.
These evils being anonymities,
We fulminate, in exile from the earth,
Aged exclusions of blood memories-
Those superstitions of explosive birth;
Until there’ll be of us not anything
But foolish death, who is confusion’s king.
(Allen Tate)
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Based on Topics: Death & Dying Poems, Faces Poems, Kings & Queens Poems, Birth Poems, Characters PoemsBased on Keywords: explosive, untutored, identities, superstitions, fulminate, exclusions, anonymities