By Hart Crane

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

• Relationships

Poet Bio

Born in Garrettsville, Ohio, Hart Crane left his unhappy home for New York before his last year of high school. He planned — against his father’s wishes — to pursue a career as a poet. Crane became part of the poetry scene in Greenwich Village where he produced his most important work, the book-length poem The Bridge. At age 33 Crane committed suicide by jumping from the deck of a steamship en route from Mexico to New York. See More By This Poet

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