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

OPPRESSION [33] by Frederick Philip Grove This night is like a giant spectral bird That flags torn wings against these trembling walls And fills the startled darkness with cries heard As from a world that from its orbit falls. And we sit up, with strange disquiet stirred. Or like a huge beast with a shaggy breast That comes with crashing and destructive tread And crouches down on every sleeper's chest So that he groans and yells, transfixed with dread-- Then travels on into an unknown west. This is a night to open dead men's graves, Confounding living worlds with worlds gone down-- To link commingled bones in fossil caves-- With skulls of murdered kings dead clowns to crown! Oh for a light that frees from fear and saves! And where art thou, my child, in these weird blows Of tossing blackness, thou, among the dead? I hope thou shrinkest not among things gross, But that my thought may draw thee to this bed: I, living, still would shield thee: hover close! In Memoriam 27