An immense acreage of solitude.No one has lived hereOr left more than a shadowAmong shrubs and stones.The hill falls to waterAnd a carious rock:Geology is a study of the spirit,One place forming anotherIn the migrations of a continent.I am always hereOn a hillside of quartz and juniper,A ridge over waterWhere the whales blow and dive,And the grounded ice-bergs toppleIn a smoke of gulls.This place is twenty years of me,The stark coastland of a question.
Who dares learn such emptiness,Contending with thoughts of ocean,Or interiors yet a wilderness?And learning, who dares forget?The world is more populous than the soul:There are hermits in Soho.Europe will have a radioactive SummerAnd tumours subsequently.This morning as I prayedAmericans flew past in a transport planePerhaps too full of bombs for greeting.I listen to my breathAnd the machine that eats motor-carsFor breakfast;They find nutrition in our old manoeuvres.I am still listening to my breath,I think that I am here.
III (Isaiah 22: 16-18)
What right have you here,And what relatives have you hereFor you to hew yourselfA tomb in this place?See, Yahweh hurls you down,Down with a single throw;Then with a strong grip he grips youAnd wins you up into a ballAnd hurls you into an immense country.There you will die
O my immense country of no place,There is nowhere as strange as now.I am alone in this acreage of breath,Landscape of spruce, fir, clover, and rock,A lifetime expiring somewhere worlds away.
