immortal form

Time stays, the canyon stays;
Their houses stay, split rock
Mortared with clay, and small.
And the shards, grey, plain or painted,
In the pale roseate dust reveal, conceal
The patterns of their days,
Speak of the pure form of the shattered pot.

We do not recreate, we rediscover
The immortal form, that, once created
Stands unchanged
In Time’s unchanging room.

—Janet Lewis, from “The Ancient Ones, Betátakin,” The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2000)

More about Janet Lewis.

absolute and mortal

Poetry

Its nature is to look
                               both absolute and mortal
as if a boy had passed through
or the imprint of his foot
                                        had been preserved
unchanged
                   under the ash of Herculaneum.

—Carl Rakosi, The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986), p. 186