Cold beach, solitary
sea with its monotone
on the shingle; the ring
in the rock prohibiting
the conviction that no one
has been here before.
Man, is there anywhere
you can say this, peering
into the future under
the mushroom cloud? Mixed
with our oldest bones are
disturbing relics, too contemporary
to be there. In pre-history
someone came to this threshold
on which you hesitate
and crossed it, incinerating
the planet, leaving it
to life to lick its wounds
thousands of years. Thought
is as fast as light,
to exceed that brings annihilation
upon us.
Yet wisdom
is at our elbow, whispering,
as at his once: Progress
is not with the machine;
it is a turning aside,
a bending over a still pool,
where the bubbles arise
from unseen depths, as from truth
breathing, showing us by their roundness
the roundness of our world.
Comments