Clutched in close embrace
and swept aloft by confiscating winds
that hasten laden to mountain peaks
and dash like breaking waves,
to cast you off, amorphour, chaotic,
and unsustained.
Lightly downward drift, or massive deluge fall,
to scour and percolate,
permeate and penetrate,
assimilate, disintegrate,
as you pour ferocious, as if in search of form -
found in countless cracks and channels, hollows, gulfs
among the hills you stripe with silver riIIs
and falls, that sinuate like snakes their way to sea;
and so obey the law that like shall seek its like, and rest therein.
0, sister water, did you also leap and canter from your bed in rushy lake,
or stony stream, to nestle at the feet of Poverello?
Impressive element, so conceived - but where's your grandeur in the bath, swilled around a
crowing baby's rosy flesh, or dashed from tumbler down the throat, to cool the body's heated
parts? So commonplace a thing you seem! Or pushed about the floor by housewife's mop, no more
immense and free. But why surprise? Unbroken splendour seems not our share on earth, for kings
at times must lace their shoes, and poets grub for words.
Mr. E. Morgan
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