The Days

Issuing from the Word

The seven days came,

Each in its own place,

Its own name.

And the first long days

A hard and rocky spring,

Inhuman burgeoning,

And nothing there for claw or hand,

Vast loneliness ere loneliness began,

Where the blank seasons in their journeying

Saw water at play with water and sand with sand.

The waters stirred

And from the doors were cast

Wild lights and shadows on the formless face

Of the flood of chaos, vast

Lengthening and dwindling image of earth and heaven.

The forest's green shadow

Softly over the water driven,

As if the earth's green wonder, endless meadow

Floated and sank within its own green light.

In water and night

Sudden appeared the lion's violent head,

Raging and burning in its watery cave.

The stallion's tread

Soundless fell on the flood, and the animals poured

Onward, flowing across the flowing wave.

Then on the waters fell

The shadow of man, and earth and the heavens scrawled

With names, as if each pebble and leaf would tell

The tale untellable. And the Lord called

The seventh day forth and the glory of the Lord.

And now we see in the sun

The mountains standing clear in the third day

(Where they shall always stay)

And thence a river run,

Threading, clear cord of water, all to all:

The wooded hill and the cattle in the meadow,

The tall wave breaking on the high sea-wall,

The people at evening walking,

The crescent shadow

Of the light built bridge, the hunter stalking

The flying quarry, each in a different morning,

The fish in the billow's heart, the man with the net,

The hungry swords crossed in the cross of warning,

The lion set

High on the banner, leaping into the sky,

The seasons playing

Their game of sun and moon and east and west,

The animal watching man and bird go by,

The women praying

For the passing of this fragmentary day

Into the day where all are gathered together,

Things and their names, in the storm's and the lightning's nest,

The seventh great day and the clear eternal weather.