8. Recalled

LONG after there were none of them alive

About the place—where there is now no place

But a walled hole where fruitless vines embrace

Their parent skeletons that yet survive

In evil thorns—none of us could arrive

At a more cogent answer to their ways

Than one old Isaac in his latter days

Had humor or compassion to contrive.

I mentioned them, and Isaac shook his head:

“The Power that you call yours and I call mine

Extinguished in the last of them a line

That Satan would have disinherited.

When we are done with all but the Divine,

We die.” And there was no more to be said.