One night I reached a cave: I slept, my head
Full of the air. There came about daybreak
A red-coat soldier to the mouth who said

The huge wound in my head began to heal
About the beginning of the seventh week.
Its valleys darkened, its villages became still:

Salt pillars are no obstacle and we
look forward on remorse. The present rain
of fire is man-made, and from a deader sea

          I am known
          by my heart’s green core
          as emerald.

City air makes a man free 
To cut his own throat or that
Of his neighbor across the way.

Sweat, wicked kissers, in your stark
Hate of the whitewashed day;
By the queen-swarm of a breast

    These children playing at statues fill
The gardens with their shrillness; in a planned
And planted grove they fling from the swinger’s hand

Child with a chip of mirror in his eye
Saw the world ugly, fled to plains of ice
Where beauty was the Snow Queen’s promises,

This to be peace, they think beside the river
Being adapted well to expectation
And their wives’ mutiny at no achievement,

Against the burly air I strode,
Where the tight ocean heaves its load,
Crying the miracles of God.