The Knife

THE plough that marks on Harley's field
In flying earth its print
Throws up, like death itself concealed,
A fang of rosy flint,
A flake of stone, by fingers hewed
Whose buried bones are gone,
All gone, with fingers, hunters, food,
But still the knife lives on.
And well I know, when bones are nought,
The blade of stone survives—
I, too, from clods of aching thought,
Have turned up sharper knives.