On the first summer day I lay in the valley. <br />Above rocks the sky sealed my eyes with a leaf <br />The grass licked my skin. The flowers bound my nostrils <br />With scented cotton threads. The soil invited <br />My hands and feet to grow down and have roots. <br />Bees and grass-hoppers drummed over <br />Crepitations of thirst rising from dry stones, <br />And the ants rearranged my ceaseless thoughts <br />Into different patterns for ever the same. <br />Then the blue wind fell out of the air <br />And the sun hammered down till I became of wood <br />Glistening brown beginning to warp. <br /> <br />On the second summer day I climbed through the forest's <br />Huge tent pegged to the mountain-side by roots. <br />My direction was cancelled by that great sum of trees. <br />Here darkness lay under the leaves in a war <br />Against light, which occasionally penetrated <br />Splintering spears through several interstices <br />And dropping white clanging shields on the soil. <br />Silence was stitched through with thinnest pine needles <br />And bird songs were stifled behind a hot hedge. <br />My feet became as heavy as logs. <br />I drank up all the air of the forest. <br />My mind changed to amber transfixed with dead flies. <br /> <br />On the third summer day I sprang from the forest <br />Into the wonder of a white snow-tide. <br />Alone with the sun's wild whispering wheel, <br />Grinding seeds of secret light on frozen fields, <br />Every burden fell from me, the forest from my back, <br />The valley dwindled to bewildering visions <br />Seen through torn shreds of the sailing clouds. <br />Above the snowfield one rock against the sky <br />Shaped out of pure silence a naked tune <br />Like a violin when the tune forsakes the instrument <br />And the pure sound flies through the ears' gate <br />And a whole sky floods the pool of one mind.<br /><br />Stephen Spender<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-the-third-day/
