In this country there is neither measure nor balance To redress the dominance of rocks and woods, The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds.
No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention, No word make them carry water or fire the kindling Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.
Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens: one wants a vacation Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice; Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.
It took three days driving north to find a cloud The polite skies over Boston couldn't possibly accommodate. Here on the last frontier of the big, brash spirit
The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles; The colors assert themselves with a sort of vengeance. Each day concludes in a huge splurge of vermilions
And night arrives in one gigantic step. It is comfortable, for a change, to mean so little. These rocks offer no purchase to herbage or people:
They are conceiving a dynasty of perfect cold. In a month we'll wonder what plates and forks are for. I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
The Pilgrims and Indians might never have happened. Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas; The pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.
Around our tent the old simplicities sough Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in. We'll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn.
