The world was born ahead of me. O monstrous twin!
I put a bud forth beneath a bower full of things,
Branches, all elbows, but gestures ending in fruit;
Shadows of clouds tilting with shadows of leaves;
The whole world got here before me, a crowd.
I spend a lifetime panting, who have been
In a fearful race with the swift hand of God;
My eyes fly through the storm in my head;
Small are the shadows cast by feathers of sight;
The clouds with one-dimension images brush the ground.
I cannot travel fast enough to catch the world
Successfully born first; the meadows run off with grass;
I close my eyes, the sun leaps beneath my thought
A fireball on the string of an idea, the fruit above
Swings, blossoms rain, the rain blossoms aloud.
It was a head-on collision of the atom with
The planet, a birth in the face of everything dying;
It was all here before me, city of churches, ants,
Continents of nothing full of waiting and now,
A welcome so big it can never be worn out.
Race or collision, monstrous twin or antagonist,
You are caught in the act of celebrating my coming!
The fruit has for image a sun, clouds measure the air,
The garden clasps the bud to its miles of bosom;
All the stars break in a bright foam as at a prow.
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