Three people come where no people belong any more. They are a woman who would be young And good-looking if these now seemed Real qualities, a child with yellow hair, a man Hardened in desperate humanity. But here are only Dry cistern, adobe flaking, a lizard. And now this Disagreeable feeling that they were summoned. Sun On the corrugated roof is a horse treading, A horse with wide wings and heavy hoofs. The lizard Is splayed head down on the wall, pulsing. They do not Bother to lift their binoculars to the shimmering distance. From this dead center the desert spirals away, Traveling outward and inward, pulsing. Summoned From half across the world, from snow and rock, From chaos, they arrived a moment ago, they thought, In perfect fortuity. There is a presence emerging here in Sun dance and clicking metal, where the lizard blinks With eyes whetted for extinction; then swirling Outward again, outward and upward through the sky's White-hot funnel. Again and again among the dry Wailing voices of displaced Yankee ghosts This ranch is abandoned to terror and the sublime. The man turns to the woman and child. He has never Said what he meant. They give him The steady cool mercy of their unreproachful eyes. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LION'S RIDE by FERDINAND FREILIGRATH PENMAEN POOL by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS THE LOW-DOWN WHITE by ROBERT WILLIAM SERVICE STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY THE DARK FOREST by PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS BLACK BUTTE by PAUL SOUTHWORTH BLISS LITTLE THINGS by EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER OCTOBER by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE: GERARD DE MANDEVILLE by ROBERT BROWNING |