Logos

Over the slumbering ocean
With wavering feet I travel.

Far back, the land, a leaden
Blue shadow slowly melting,
Sinks in the gnawing circle.
The hills are eaten
Away in silence.

The smooth-backed serpent-hided ocean
Under my footfall whispers.
Pale gossamer lies upon the billows,
And far it sounds a crystal tinkling.
The strengthless sun is smouldering
In the soft sky, drained and wounded.

Thou heaven, bent twice around me,
Keep still! Mounts fast my terror
On the bright silence rocking,
The chalk-pale heavens reel; in silence
The ocean streams to the white horizon.
I fall through blackness.
End and Beginning!
Thy tides are warm and stagnant.
In caverns, snow-white giants
Sprawl on great rocks, and the currents
Lift and let fall their foam-soft crumbling
Limbs, and their eyes more clear than water
Laugh when the waves comb out their tresses.
Their hands are vague and careless
As lazy tree-tops swaying.
On their huge breasts hang generations
Asleep, like sunless forests
Light shall bear these, whom darkness ripened.
They shall know naught save that in slumber
Mysterious fingers
Touched them, and their blood yearned upward,
Chafing against sealed ears and eyelids

Amazed they rise. The ocean
Is strewn with silent forms which, standing,
Blaze on the gulf. Before them
They see the outspread and soundless morning,
And their immense eternal pathway.