Withstanding spring as sand-forts do the tide,
Their walls, their shape, could not dissolve and die,
Only be overlapping in a strong chain, turned to stone,
And grayed and yellowed now like these.
Where is the ammunition, the piled-up balls
With the star-splintered hearts of ice?
This sky is no carrier-warrior-pigeon
Escaping endless intersecting circles.
It is a dead one, or the sky from which a dead one fell.
The urns have caught his ashes or his feathers.
When did the star dissolve, or was it captured
By the sequence of squares and squares and circles, circles?
Can the clocks say; is it there below,
About to tumble in snow?
Going back to the clocks from the first line, Bishop is wrestling with whether or not she can trust the time. Can the clocks predict what will happen? Do they know what is below? She leaves us with questions because she isn’t sure herself.
Paris 7 A.M.