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Climbs a branch, drops from tree,
But arrives to depart
While his shout cracks my heart.
Lord, does anyone see
All those boys who are me,
And does anyone know all those homes white as snow
That like riverboats glide
In the tide of the train as it takes me away?
Who can say, who can say?
Just my time machine moves
Through the land of my loves,
And more houses and boys and more trees and more lawns
Wait there just ahead in the circling dawns.
A procession of dreams!
O, isn’t God clever?
He’s cloned me in teams.
So? I’ll live here forever!
Nor Is the Aim of Man to Stay Beneath a Stone (#ulink_e95b90e2-4cd1-5d24-b3f3-1d215ac9a305)
They say that we must falter, fail, and fall away
To all that’s lost;
I say the cost is overmuch
I’d spend us better with our will.
The mills of our machine-made gods grind swift not slow,
I with their lightning-arcs and wild illuminations go
To light a path
Not to the grave but walking on the air
On stairs of weather, cloud, and sky.
I would not doom us with those easy repetitions
Of old kettledrumming dooms
I heard from childhood on in dull, drab,
Ideas long since gone to incestuous
Intellectuals’ rooms …
Where they make litanies of night to scare their souls
And turn from birds and skies and stars
To imitate death moles or morbid beetles ticking death
Which if we let them would dig deep in time and keep
Our flesh in most inconsequent black holes.
That’s not my game,
Nor is the aim of man to stay beneath a stone.
To own the universe, our aim. And never die.
That’s mine, and yours, and yours, and yours,
To shame dumb death, leave Earth to dust, tread moon,
Vault Mars, and win the stars with flame …
Or know the reason why.
Joy Is the Grace We Say to God (#ulink_1e89b8d3-4857-5361-abe9-335d3d4edfef)
Joy is the grace we say to God
For His gifts given.
It is the leavening of time,
It splits our bones with lightning,
Fills our marrow
With a harrowing of light
And seeds our blood with sun,
And thus we
Put out the night
And then
Put out the night.
Tears make an end of things;
So weep, yes, weep.
But joy says, after that, not done …
No, not by any means. Not done!
Take breath and shout it out!
That laugh, that cry which says: Begin again,
So all’s reborn, begun!
Now hear this, Eden’s child,
Remember in thy green Earth heaven,
All beauty-shod:
Joy is the grace we say to God.
They Have Not Seen the Stars (#ulink_19374315-59c5-5749-b1a7-0156ca749c64)
They have not seen the stars,
Not one, not one
Of all the creatures on this world
In all the ages since the sands first touched the wind
Not one, not one,
No beast of all the beasts has stood
On meadowland or plain or hill
And known the thrill of looking at those fires;
Our soul admires what they, oh, they, have never known.
Five billion years have flown in turnings of the spheres
But not once in all those years
Has lion, dog, or bird that sweeps the air
Looked there, oh, look. Looked there, ah God, the stars;
Oh, look, look there!
It is as if all time had never been,
Or universe or sun or moon or simple morning light.
Their tragedy was mute and blind, and so remains. Our sight?
Yes, ours? To know now what we are.
But think of it, then choose—now, which?
Born to raw Earth, inhabiting a scene
And all of it, no sooner viewed, erased, gone blind
As if these miracles had never been.
Vast circlings of sounding light, of fire and frost,
And all so quickly seen then quickly lost?
Or us, in fragile flesh, with God’s new eyes
That lift and comprehend and search the skies?
We watch the seasons drifting in the lunar tide
And know the years, remembering what’s died.
Oh, yes, perhaps some birds some nights
Have felt Orion rise and tuned their flights
And turned southward
Because star-charts were printed in their sweet genetic dreams—
