shot on a gun-metal gloaming.

Man is a long time coming.

Man will yet win.

Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.

There are men who can’t be bought.

The fireborn are at home in fire.

The stars make no noise.

You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.

Time is a great teacher.

Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief

the people march.

In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for

keeps, the people march:

“Where to? what next?”

Timesweep

I was born in the morning of the world,

So I know how morning looks,

morning in the valley wanting,

morning on a mountain wanting.

Morning looks like people look,

like a cornfield wanting corn,

like a sea wanting ships.

Tell me about any strong beautiful wanting

And there is your morning, my morning,

everybody’s morning.

Makers and givers may be moon shaken,

may be star lost,

Knowing themselves as sea-deep seekers,

both seeking and sought,

Knowing love is a ring and the ring endless,

Seeing love as a wheel and the wheel endless.

Love may be a hard flesh crying its want.

Love may be a thin horizon air,

thinner than snowwhite wool finespun,

finer than any faint blue mist

blown away and gone on yesterday’s wind.

There are hungers

for a nameless bread

out of the dust

of the hard earth,

out of the blaze

of the calm sun.

Blow now, winds, you so old at blowing.

Oak at the river, pine at the rocks,

brandish your arms

Slow to a whisper wind, fast to a storm howl.

* * *

The wind carves sand into shapes,

Endless the fresh designs,

Wind and ice patient beyond telling.

Ice can tip mountains over,

Ice the giant beyond measure.

And the sun governs valley lights,

Transforms hats into shoes and back again

Before we are through any long looking.

* * *

The pink nipples of the earth in springtime,

The long black eyelashes of summer’s look,

The harvest laughter of tawny autumn,

The winter silence of land in snow covers,

Each speaks its own oaths of the cool and the flame

of naked possessions clothed and come naked again:

The sea knows it all.

They all crept out of the sea.

* * *

These wheels within wheels

These leaves folded in leaves

These wheeling winds

and winding leaves

Those sprockets

from those seeds

This spiral shooting

from that rainfall—

What does a turning earth

say to its axis?

How should a melon say thanks

Or a squash utter blessings?

* * *

In the heave of the hankering sea

God put precisions of music and accord

to be heard in the deepest seabells

amid the farthest violet spawn

moving in seagreen doom and skyblue promise.

The sea shares its tokens—

how and with whom?

To these shores birds return

and keep returning

for the curves of fresh flights.

To these waters fish return