Читать книгу My Barefoot Rank - David Craig - Страница 8

snow, the heat of an outdoor sauna—

cigar sweat, good liquor. The nearby rocks

collude; though those farther off

choose to remember when they were space dust,

something fitter than this. But they know, too,

that the earth is good in its way, food aplenty

for the travelling-abouts. The leggeds

don’t know where they are going,

but that is their charm.

Clouds are much the same, older.

They sniff the ground like the beasts, tribes.

But rocks! Now they know how to wait!

They settle in the valleys for the long siege,

perch upon ridges, look-outs; they will wait until

only they matter again—things as they should be:

time, that brigand, a passing, futile thing.

Men are like beetles, busying themselves,

fussing, losing all their heat, energy on things

that do not matter, cities that rise like comic hats.

They would do better to bide, to learn

the slow value of the simple phrase, a step

on the mountain. If they could fathom that,

their lives would be changed; they would live

with God, whose voice gives rise

to mottled sunsets, to rifts in oceans, waves.

Those shakings are food for rill and mountain.

They fashion the cold’s flakes here—

the whole universe, a vowel half uttered.