THE PAST VALUES Alas for the sad standards In the eyes of the old masters Sprouting through glaze of their pictures! For what we stare at through glass Opens on to our running time: As nature spilled before the summer mansion Pours through windows in on our dimension. And the propeller's rigid transparent flicker To airman over continental ranges Between him and the towns and river Spells dynamics of this rotating Age of invention, too rapid for sight. Varnish over paint and dust across glass: Stare back, remote, the static drum, The locked ripeness of the Centaurs' feast, The blowing flags, frozen stiff In a cracked fog, and the facing Reproach of self-portraits. Alas for the sad standards In the eyes of the freshly dead young Sprawled in the mud of battle. Stare back, stare back, with dust over glazed Eyes, their gaze at partridges, Their dreams of girls, and their collected Faith in home, wound up like a little watch. To ram them outside time, violence Of wills that ride the cresting day Struck them with lead so swift Their falling sight stared through its glass. Our sight stares back on death, like glass Infringing the rigid eyes with toneless glaze, Sinking stretched bodies inch-deep in their frames. Through glass their eyes meet ours Like standards of the masters That shock us with their peace.