On The Third Day

On the first summer day I lay in the valley.

Above rocks the sky sealed my eyes with a leaf

The grass licked my skin. The flowers bound my nostrils

With scented cotton threads. The soil invited

My hands and feet to grow down and have roots.

Bees and grass-hoppers drummed over

Crepitations of thirst rising from dry stones,

And the ants rearranged my ceaseless thoughts

Into different patterns for ever the same.

Then the blue wind fell out of the air

And the sun hammered down till I became of wood

Glistening brown beginning to warp.

On the second summer day I climbed through the forest's

Huge tent pegged to the mountain-side by roots.

My direction was cancelled by that great sum of trees.

Here darkness lay under the leaves in a war

Against light, which occasionally penetrated

Splintering spears through several interstices

And dropping white clanging shields on the soil.

Silence was stitched through with thinnest pine needles

And bird songs were stifled behind a hot hedge.

My feet became as heavy as logs.

I drank up all the air of the forest.

My mind changed to amber transfixed with dead flies.

On the third summer day I sprang from the forest

Into the wonder of a white snow-tide.

Alone with the sun's wild whispering wheel,

Grinding seeds of secret light on frozen fields,

Every burden fell from me, the forest from my back,

The valley dwindled to bewildering visions

Seen through torn shreds of the sailing clouds.

Above the snowfield one rock against the sky

Shaped out of pure silence a naked tune

Like a violin when the tune forsakes the instrument

And the pure sound flies through the ears' gate

And a whole sky floods the pool of one mind.