The world's as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to <br />change; the age of tyrants returns; <br />The greatest civilization that has ever existed builds itself higher <br />towers on breaking foundations. <br />Recurrent episodes; they were determined when the ape's children <br />first ran in packs, chipped flint to an edge. <br />I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the blind wind. <br /> <br />In the morning perhaps <br />I shall find strength again <br />To value the immense beauty of this time of the world, the flowers <br />of decay their pitiful loveliness, the fever-dream <br />Tapestries that back the drama and are called the future. This <br />ebb of vitality feels the ignoble and cruel <br />Incidents, not the vast abstract order. <br /> <br />I lie and hear dark rain beat <br />the roof, and the night-blind wind. <br />In the Ventana country darkness and rain and the roar of waters <br />fill the deep mountain-throats. <br />The creekside shelf of sand where we lay last August under a slip of stars, <br />And firelight played on the leaning gorge-walls, is drowned and <br />lost. The deer of the country huddle on a ridge <br />In a close herd under madrone-trees; they tremble when a rockslide <br />goes down, they open great darkness- <br />Drinking eyes and press closer. <br /> <br />Cataracts of rock <br />Rain down the mountain from cliff to cliff and torment the <br />stream-bed. The stream deals with them. The laurels are wounded, <br />Redwoods go down with their earth and lie thwart the gorge. I <br />hear the torrent boulders battering each other, <br />I feel the flesh of the mountain move on its bones in the wet <br />darkness. <br /> <br />Is this more beautiful <br />Than man's disasters? These wounds will heal in their time; so <br />will humanity's. This is more beautiful ... at night . . .<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-without-sleep/
