The desolations are not the sorrows’ kin.

Sorrow is gentle and sings her sons to rest.

The desolations have no word nor music,

Only an endless inarticulate cry

Inaudible to the poetry-pampered ear.

The desolations tell

Nothing for ever, the interminable

Civil war of earth and water and fire.

These have to do with our making.

What guards us here

Among the established and familiar things?

The leaf, the apple and the rounded earth

Where even imagination is an O,

And only endless harvest is gathered there,

Nothing but that. Yet sometimes absently

We pause and murmur “We came crying hither”

Remembering, and set up a little stage

For our indigenous formal tragedy

Where we are all the actors.

The wild earth

Pours its hot entrails on the slopes of Aetna,

Blasting whatever’s made. Yet in a while

Black house-rows like a pleasant street in Hell

Rise from the frozen slag, and safe within

The lava rooms Sicilian families

Follow their ancient ways; the vine-rows yield

Seven times a year, fed on earth’s dearest dust.

And all forget the admonition of fire.

There, if you listen, you may hear them say,

“Love is at home, earth’s joys he all around us,

The vine-stock and the rose are guarded well.

The roof-tree holds, and friends come in the evening.”

What saves us from the raging desolations

And tells us we shall walk through peace to peace?