Classic Poem

The World is all orange-round:
The sea smells salt between:
The strong hills climb on their own backs,
Coloured and damascene,
Cloud-flecked and sunny-green;
Knotted and straining up,
Up, with still hands and cold:
Grip at the slipping sky,
Yet cannot hold:
Round twists old Earth, and round,
Stillness not yet found.

Plains like a flat dish, too,
Shudder and spin:
Roads in a pattern crawl
Scratched with a pin
Across the fields' dim shagreen:
—Dusty their load:
But over the craggy hills
Wanders the walking road.

Broad as the hill's broad,
Rough as the world 's rough, too:
Long as the Age is long,
Ancient and true,
Swinging, and broad, and long,
Craggy, strong.
Gods sit like milestones
On the edge of the Road, by the Moon's sill;
Man has feet, feet that swing, pound the high hill
Above and above, until
He stumble and widely spill
His dusty bones.

Round twists old Earth, and round,
Stillness not yet found.