The Trench

Out of the wasteland, native, Wanderers we

Press the slopes, the uncompleted palisades

Of hills; the incorruptible, the undefendable

Line of hills:

Unit first of instinct's barricades.

On grass we ponder the incident of grass;

On ore the sparkle of the watchbands on our wrists,

On hands the tough hard way of fists

Certain of bones wellshaped to stand the smash

Of the piston armthrust in the coveted face

And conservative of our neighbor.

The lash

Of our feet is sturdily bent towards this place,

And this, and this; the demolition of the lily;

The unbalancing of hearthstones; the upheaval

Of farms' premeditative peace,

Footnotes of cities in ways mediaeval.

And more than electrical, more than ways modern,

We seek in genesis through instinct's season,

More ways than footways, or those of mind:

We seek illegal entries into reason

Of what we are and why, the planet's reach,

The vanities of settlement, the soul,

And all the methods of unhuman:

We seek in space the business of the mole.

THE NIGHTINGALE

For Jane Valentine

Was it I, who believed that within my time

The moon 'coexistent with my ruinous

State, and the bright contemporary nightingale

Would fail; the moon to mathematical death,

And the haunted bird from want of breath.

Who will spread my rumors, noting the exact

Date, when the great satellites crash to their fall,

When the land settles, and empty sky regains

Its cloudy impotence-O who will tell?