Classic Poem

1.

His hands are vagabonds,
loiterers with beast and bird,
His feet pirates,
swaggering gentlemen
Who escaped the monastery
by one funeral mass too many.
His face is a Chinese prayer cut in bronze,
On which the pious winds of a thousand troubled years
have placed thin dry fingers.
His eyes burn like the amber lamps of St. Mary's shrine
In a country it is forbidden to mention.

This man would use the Sphinx and Pyramids
or the Indian totem-poles of North America.
If no other stone were handy, he would
Knock the side walls from a Chinese temple.
He will show you camels moving
As a line of toy shadows in a child's dream,
Remarking, " We have crossed the desert,
But the desert is the desert still! "

2.

He is the man who, needing marble,
was offered shadows,
and taking them
made marble.
He is the man who, needing stone,
was offered water,
and taking it
made stone.
He is the man who, needing bronze,
was offered fire,
and taking it
made bronze.

He is the Niagara of the ages —
no man can explain:
This is where he begins,
this is where he ends.