Untitled Fragment
And as the procession
before me fled one seemed to
know as one whose years the mask
and smokeless altars interpose
incessantly
numerous as the dead
from whose forms shadows
pass and
of that great crowd rearranged
the thrush and thrift and edelweiss: a
SHAPE whose garments in the changing
seasons as yet formless against
the trembling like the
lifting of a veil
Copyright © 2020 by Lynn Xu. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 27, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.