No cars go by

Where dogs are barking at the desert.

Yet it is not twenty years since many lamps

Shed their juices in this one time town

And stores grew big lights, like oranges and pears.

Now not one lame miner

Sits on the rotten verandah,

Works in the irons where

Judas’ shadow dwells.

Yet I could hew a city

From the side of their hill.

O deep stone covert where the dusk

Is full of lighted beasts

And the mad stars preach wars without end:

Whose bushes and grasses live without water,

There the skinny father of hate rolls in his dust

And if the wind should shift one leaf

The dead jump up and bark for their ghosts:

Their dry bones want our penniless souls.

Bones, go back to your baskets.

Get your fingers out of my clean skin.

Rest in your rainless death until your own souls

Come back in the appointed way and sort you out from your remains.

We who are still alive will wring a few green blades

From the floor of this valley

Though ploughs abhor your metal and your clay.

Rather than starve with you in rocks without oasis,

We will get up and work your loam

Until some prayer or some lean sentence

Bleeds like the quickest root they ever cut.

For we cannot forget the legend of the world’s child-hood

Or the track to the dogwood valley

And Adam our Father’s old grass farm

Wherein they gave the animals names

And knew Christ was promised first without scars

When all God’s larks called out to Him

In their wild orchard.