These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows <br />Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance, <br />Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak <br />Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew, <br />Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks <br />Show sharply in it, as they might in snow. <br />But it’s soon gone in the sun — what good does it do? <br />The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees, <br />Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live here <br />Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes. <br /> <br />Bring water with you if you come to live here — <br />Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deep <br />That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas. <br />Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing, <br />Mountains of ice. You will have need of these <br />Profundities and peaks of wet and cold. <br /> <br />Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier, <br />Birds of a golden colour, who will sing <br />Of leaves that do not wither, watery fruits <br />That heavily hang on long melodious boughs <br />In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys. <br /> <br />I have now been here — how many years? Years unnumbered. <br />My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved. <br />I brought no bird with me, I have no cistern <br />Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow. <br />Some day, for lack of these, I’ll spin a web <br />Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang there <br />Face downward, like a spider, blown as lightly <br />As ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me. <br />Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.<br /><br />Conrad Potter Aiken<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/exile-16/
