Сонет N 60 В смерти все равны

Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

There was upon the sill a pencil mark,

Vital with shadow when the sun stood still

At noon, but now, because the day was dark,

It was a pencil mark upon the sill.

And the mute clock, maintaining ever the same

Dead moment, blank and vacant of itself,

Was a pink shepherdess, a picture frame,

A shell marked Souvenir, there on the shelf.

Whence it occurred to her that he might be,

The mainspring being broken in his mind,

A clock himself, if one were so inclined,

That stood at twenty minutes after three —

The reason being for this, it might be said,

That things in death were neither clocks not people, but only dead.

 

из цикла семнадцати сонетов: "an Ungrafted Tree"