Clouds
Why did he think of clouds?
Think of them first, I mean, when nothing was there,
when the sky was blank, the thinker's quiet brain
brilliant and bare?
What were the gray thoughts
that left serenity so far behind?
What slow, pale cares, what huge doubts
came undesigned?
Now, though our vision fails,
those ancient meditations still revolve,
still clouds unshape and shape in folds and veils
and still dissolve,
and still in long patrol
the brooding sun's intolerable rays
pacing the clouch reaches of the soul
dazzle the haze.
Some day at quiet dawn
discovery will clear the troubled mind:
the lucid sky will suddenly stretch and yawn
and the earth go blind.
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