No cars go by
Where dogs are barking at the desert.
Yet it is not twenty years since many lamps
Shed their juices in this one time town
And stores grew big lights, like oranges and pears.
Now not one lame miner
Sits on the rotten verandah,
Works in the irons where
Judas’ shadow dwells.
Yet I could hew a city
From the side of their hill.
O deep stone covert where the dusk
Is full of lighted beasts
And the mad stars preach wars without end:
Whose bushes and grasses live without water,
There the skinny father of hate rolls in his dust
And if the wind should shift one leaf
The dead jump up and bark for their ghosts:
Their dry bones want our penniless souls.
Bones, go back to your baskets.
Get your fingers out of my clean skin.
Rest in your rainless death until your own souls
Come back in the appointed way and sort you out from your remains.
We who are still alive will wring a few green blades
From the floor of this valley
Though ploughs abhor your metal and your clay.
Rather than starve with you in rocks without oasis,
We will get up and work your loam
Until some prayer or some lean sentence
Bleeds like the quickest root they ever cut.
For we cannot forget the legend of the world’s childhood
Or the track to the dogwood valley
And Adam our Father’s old grass farm
Wherein they gave the animals names
And knew Christ was promised first without scars
When all God’s larks called out to Him
In their wild orchard.