Nuevo Mexico

The mountains lie in sapphire silence, sleeping.

They are indifferent to time, to the drifting

Clouds that throw over them

The shadow of a dream.

I tell you I could batter at these mountains,

Beating with clenched fists, crying:

Why? Who? When? Where? How? No answer-

Only the lingering of the clouds, the silence,

Wind in the pifions, maybe, a little,

Finally, drunk by the silence.

All things flow and are absorbed that stand

In the tide of time; this imperturbable land

Drinks up blood, fire, water. The peoples fall,

And the cities fall, and the trails forget

Feet and the voices.

Have you not felt, however, in the night

A call in the soft wind that the hills remember,

A voiceless cry of a new creation . . . something .. .

God knows whether it be a fear or a longing . . .

Stirs them, wakes them, so that their hearts quicken,

Tremble awhile? Ah, but the wind whispers

Time and time . . . not now . . . at the end of time,

Perhaps . . . the lingering of the clouds, the silence,

Wind in the pifions, maybe, a little-

Finally, drunk by the silence.