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How is the world so small?

Yet I once viewed it from a white peak in summer--

but as I age it is gone, it is gone, and lost:

a stagnant life, a death before I’ve begun,

a heatless stone in the ground,

a regress that is constant,

a blood-bath that they drained, and now the sky is sallow.

This is the ashen night, for there is no dark and light

this is the blind eye, for there is no convergent sight;

give me a broken arm, not an arm that moves but does nothing

give me a life that lives, a mouth that breathes--

if it is leaden breath at least it is breath, 

if it is an mangled arm at least it reaches 

out.