Collected Poems 24
Chapter Room
Sixty silent men sat
at a long narrow table
strapped in chairs
in a half-lit room
slumping forward
while one elevated oval face
at table head
subdued them
with words,
while austere portraits
of men in oils
look on from walls,
and not one of them
lifted his head
toward the window
where the dark red sun
was staging a glorious setting
out beyond the ornate
swung wrought-iron grating.