Born of Earth

Born of earth
Walled in skin
Shaped by bones
Man
Made of flesh and blood
Delivered on this patch of ground
Under this splash of sky
Rises from oceans
And shade
Stands up
And fashions himself
On benchmarks of self
On the century
On the place

After floating
In the tender
Marsh-sheet
After rocking
In this lagoon
Restlessly stretched
Over subterranean humours
His body
Of water and alloys
At last closes in
On life
Perilous residence
Spent briefly
Or slowly a drift

Man broke the surface
Not to stagnate
Man emerged
Not to lie decaying
Man pushed
Towards existence
And its reefs
Towards the future
And its stratagems
Towards seed times
And desolation
To unravel enigma
Or simply
Exist

From fall
To resurrection
From failure
To ascent
Formed
From earliest leaf mould
Flood-filled
With the universe's laws
Hammer-shaping his liberty
Ahead of the snares
Lashing himself to the star
Beyond the shadows
Man
Broke into his song

Born of earth
He shook up gravity
Tested the balance
Between time's story
And the horizon
Between the minuscule
And the infinite
Between the derisory
And sense
From dream to dream
Step by step
Man mulishly
Went in search
Of the issue and the core.