I
Come, march, lumber, trot or leap, you mud-colored ones,
Elephant and rhinoceros; Adam was made out of mud;
Dust-colored mouse, wolf, badger and mole, man comes to dust;
Yellow lion and red
Fox, having taken the colors of the rocks
Of the desert, because you remind us
Of hidden desert springs; black panther, come,
Night is less dark than you. And the striped ones,
Tiger, zebra, raccoon with the stripes on his tail,
The little chipmunk wearing his on his back,
Because day and night
Follow each other, light and dark, and because,
Wounded, brave men have risen up again;
And beasts big and small with spots, leopard and jaguar, ocelot,
giraffe,
Patterned with lovely imperfection,
Come, brindle and tabby, come grizzle; the wind that lifts
The ivy, sunlight in the leaves
Speckles and freckles every earthbound thing.
You, lamb, you, ermine, polar bear, come too;
We need you, white ones; the moon
On whose flanks the sun’s heat is tempered,
Is bright like you.
II
How dry earth was, harsh, unwelcoming,
Fighting back blindly all our trying to tame it,
Throwing up stones to our digging sticks, rocky under the plow;
Sand and shale under thin topsoil, hard
Hills, gullies and treeless slopes saying No to our seed.
Our tears were the rain. Grew roots, miraculous sprouts,
Love’s smallest, tenderest shoots. We tended them, bending,
Backs breaking under the dry sun’s eye, baking
Dry on that friable crust that seemed trying to shake us
Off, like its own gray dust. Yet for all the stones,
Rocks, sand, shale, hills, dust, bones that were all earth gave
Us, how we loved it. Clung to it, as a babe
Clings to even the milkless breast. When the waters rose
At first we were glad, seeing glades and groves,
Pastures and gardens, where nothing would grow before.
Below where we toss on the flood, a precious harvest
Winks like jewelled seaweed. Land
Sinks beyond our reach. Let us float
In the gray trough of the year, in this fragile boat,
Ark that will sustain us above the unyielding earth.
Creatures that crawl, trot, gallop, run, leap, stumble,
Scrabbling and scratching, struggling with resistant soil, fumbling
to find
Your own particular path to the door of home,
Birds of the air, eagles and doves, carrion-eaters,
Reptiles and insects, everything that lives,
Let the flood that destroys us hold us, buoy us up.
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