On The Third Day

On the first summer day I lay in the valley.

Above rocks the sky sealed my eyes with a

The grass licked my skin.

The flowers bound my

With scented cotton threads.

The soil

My hands and feet to grow down and have roots.

Bees and grass-hoppers drummed

Crepitations of thirst rising from dry stones,

And the ants rearranged my ceaseless

Into different patterns for ever the same.

Then the blue wind fell out of the

And the sun hammered down till I became of

Glistening brown beginning to warp.

On the second summer day I climbed through the

Huge tent pegged to the mountain-side by roots.

My direction was cancelled by that great sum of trees.

Here darkness lay under the leaves in a

Against light, which occasionally

Splintering spears through several

And dropping white clanging shields on the soil.

Silence was stitched through with thinnest pine

And bird songs were stifled behind a hot hedge.

My feet became as heavy as logs.

I drank up all the air of the forest.

My mind changed to amber transfixed with dead flies.

On the third summer day I sprang from the

Into the wonder of a white snow-tide.

Alone with the sun's wild whispering wheel,

Grinding seeds of secret light on frozen fields,

Every burden fell from me, the forest from my back,

The valley dwindled to bewildering

Seen through torn shreds of the sailing clouds.

Above the snowfield one rock against the

Shaped out of pure silence a naked

Like a violin when the tune forsakes the

And the pure sound flies through the ears'

And a whole sky floods the pool of one mind.