Sky and sea, horizon-hinged <br />Tablets of blank blue, couldn't, <br />Clapped shut, flatten this man out. <br /> <br />The great gods, Stone-Head, Claw-Foot <br />Winded by much rock-bumping <br />And claw-threat, realized that. <br /> <br />For what, then, had they endured <br />Dourly the long hots and colds, <br />Those old despots, if he sat <br /> <br />Laugh-shaken on his doorsill, <br />Backbone unbendable as <br />Timbers of his upright hut? <br /> <br />Hard gods were there, nothing else. <br />Still he thumbed out something else. <br />Thumbed no stony, horny pot, <br /> <br />But a certain meaning green. <br />He withstood them, that hermit. <br />Rock-face, crab-claw verged on green. <br /> <br />Gulls mulled in the greenest light.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hermit-at-outermost-house/
