Frederick Philip Grove
LANDSCAPES
(IM 16-28)

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e-Edition by Gaby Divay
© August 2007

University of Manitoba Libraries	FPG & FrL Collections	University of Manitoba Archives

THE SLUICE [19] by Frederick Philip Grove (1923) Each moment is and was; and each divides What was and what will be: a needle's eye Through which all time must rush with quickening slides,[20] Vast though it be as is at dusk the sky. Thus pours this river through its[21] narrow sluice The uproar of its floods which, drop by drop, Foam up and thunder, savage beasts let loose To wreck what was;[22] and never can they stop; Then lie, transfigured,[23] as if they had not stirred And form the mirror of a drowsy lake Where bathe the stars and gaze at us, unblurred,[24] As if with looks our yearning love to slake. What was the future has become the past, Immovable and not to be reversed, With stars to twinkle as in silver cast And lapses of blank[25] spaces interspersed. In Memoriam 21