Earthman

I live by sky and sea and stone.
On a blind rock I live alone,
next to a crowd of nights and days.
I live in where the lightning plays.

I have two clocks of late and soon,
the shifting shape of the cold moon,
and the dance of that other one
that I dare scarcely name, the sun.

Oh God, the terror and the love
of that immensitude above!
The dazzling for its own dark reasons,
in the wild step of the seasons!

I see the stars, my ancestors
I like to see them as, because
so many and so far from me.
And I am of that family.

I see the rain and not the wind
on a blind rock the storm has dinned
its secrets at. I am too slow
and some things I shall never know.

I live alone about my head.
Outside I share a home, a bed
with an Earthwoman. What I see
she sees, and not so differently,

so why is it the lightning plays
between us, and a thunderous craze
of thoughts explodes, to burst the heart
of a stream’s bed? We live apart

together now, on a blind rock
beneath the stars. A chasm-shock
is all we share. A stream is gone
that ran between us on and on.

I live by sky and sea and stone.
On a blind rock I live alone,
next to a crowd of nights and days.
I live in where the lightning plays.