Lyell's Hypothesis Again

     An Attempt to Explain the Former
     Changes of the Earth's Surface by
     Causes Now in Operation

       

       subtitle of Lyell: Principles of Geology

 

The mountain road ends here,   

Broken away in the chasm where   

The bridge washed out years ago.   

The first scarlet larkspur glitters   

In the first patch of April

Morning sunlight. The engorged creek   

Roars and rustles like a military   

Ball. Here by the waterfall,   

Insuperable life, flushed

With the equinox, sentient   

And sentimental, falls away

To the sea and death. The tissue   

Of sympathy and agony

That binds the flesh in its Nessus' shirt;   

The clotted cobweb of unself   

And self; sheds itself and flecks   

The sun's bed with darts of blossom   

Like flagellant blood above   

The water bursting in the vibrant   

Air. This ego, bound by personal   

Tragedy and the vast

Impersonal vindictiveness

Of the ruined and ruining world,   

Pauses in this immortality,

As passionate, as apathetic,

As the lava flow that burned here once;   

And stopped here; and said, 'This far   

And no further.' And spoke thereafter   

In the simple diction of stone.

Naked in the warm April air,   

We lie under the redwoods,   

In the sunny lee of a cliff.   

As you kneel above me I see   

Tiny red marks on your flanks

Like bites, where the redwood cones   

Have pressed into your flesh.   

You can find just the same marks   

In the lignite in the cliff

Over our heads. Sequoia

Langsdorfii before the ice,   

And sempervirens afterwards,   

There is little difference,   

Except for all those years.

Here in the sweet, moribund   

Fetor of spring flowers, washed,   

Flotsam and jetsam together,   

Cool and naked together,   

Under this tree for a moment,   

We have escaped the bitterness   

Of love, and love lost, and love   

Betrayed. And what might have been,   

And what might be, fall equally   

Away with what is, and leave   

Only these ideograms

Printed on the immortal   

Hydrocarbons of flesh and stone.

 

Kenneth Rexroth