Grim, and surrendered to their purposes,
their tangibilities of pulp or stone,
the houses, chairs and tables rise again—
the mute inflexible realities
that never died. Although our lightest touch
or smallest word had pared them paper-thin,
or seared them to a smudge of scenery,
their massive life endured beneath our much—
ados. And now, compact and free
of us who might have felled them where they stood,
they rear the monuments death cannot hide,
being no more than their immensities—
no more, within the darkness of their clutch,
than these sad ultimates of stone or grain.