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Not our good luck nor the instant peak and fulfillment
  of time gives us to see
The beauty of things, nothing can bridle it.
God who walks lightning-naked on the Pacific has never
  been hidden from any
Puddle or hillock of the earth behind us.
Between the mean mud tenements and huddle of the filth
  of Babylon the river Euphrates;
And over the tiled brick temple buttresses
And the folly of a garden on arches, the ancienter simple
  and silent tribe of the stars
Filed, and for all her gods and the priests' mouths
God also moved on the city; or a certain young tribesman
  come down from the mountains of the north
Espied him in the eyes of a temple harlot;
Whom presently, as then, when the priests have choked him
  with perfume some prophet like a desert camel
Shall talk with in the ridges above the rock-tombs.

Dark ships drawing in from the sundown and the islands
  of the south, great waves with gray vapor in your
  hollows
And whitening of high heads coming home from the west,
>From Formosa or the skerries of Siberia and the sight
  of the eyes that have widened for  the sky-peaks of
  Asia:
That he touched you is no wonder, that you slid from
  his hand
Is an old known tale to our foreland cypresses, no news
  to the Lobos granite, no marvel
To Point Pinos Light and the beacon at Point Sur,
But here is the marvel, he is nowhere not present,
  his beauty, it is burning in the midland villages
And tortures men's eyes in the alleys of cities.

Far-flown ones, you children of the hawk's dream future
  when you lean from a crag of the last planet on the
  ocean
Of the far stars, remember we also have known beauty.


Submitted by Holt

Added: 1 Mar 2004 | Last Read: 13 Mar 2010 10:43 PM | Viewed: 2993 times

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