THE BELLCOTE

Lean on the ropes; you need not ask
how many will swing dumb, nor care
such limping courses are a task
not for the arm but for the air.
An iron fist that clubs a shell
of iron on the lips, may tongue
with no more music than a bell
cast memberless or never rung.
But let the poems hope to speak
though impotent or cracked and sour
(or draught and rust their only sound).
The willing ear is not so weak:
it knows of tigers in the tower
that roar the homing changes round.


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