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