I
Flying alone between a hot oasis
and a cool island, nine hours, six miles high,
over sierras, tundra, seas of sky,
my mind staggers: I know not what this place is—
no map, no mirror to tell me what my face is—
anonymous as a myth, I fly and fly.
And who can say on landing, who am I,
emerging dazed from this tumultuous stasis?
Yes, I will gather from the evidence
my baggage offers, and my teeming purse,
a date and place of birth, a name, a nation,
my sex, my current worth (in pounds and pence),
passport identity. For better or worse,
none checks the soul, nor asks its destination.
II
Speeding into the dark, Las Vegas gone,
the grandest canyon filled with shifting cloud,
into my ears piped music rushes loud,
drowning the jets that hurl me into dawn.
Small ancient men crouched in an earlier dawn
and watched the smoke rise in an arcane cloud,
then stamping, chanting, heads thrown back or bowed,
beheld hot metal tears drawn from the stone.
The Age of Bronze yields to a rage of wings.
I, ignorant of the early miners’ lore,
climb effortless undreamed-of steeps of air.
Metal I cannot name ascends and sings,
while in its intricate womb I crouch and soar
beyond my power to know what brought me there.