A Portrait in Greys

Will it never be possible
to separate you from your greyness?
Must you be always sinking backward
into your grey-brown landscapes—and trees
always in the distance, always against a grey sky?

                          Must I be always
moving counter to you? Is there no place
where we can be at peace together
and the motion of our drawing apart
be altogether taken up?
                                       I see myself
standing upon your shoulders touching 
a grey, broken sky—
but you, weighted down with me,
yet gripping my ankles,—move
                          laboriously on,
where it is level and undisturbed by colors.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 20, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“A Portrait in Greys” originally appeared in Al Que Quiere! (The Four Seas Company, 1917).

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