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From “Arizona Poems”
THE CANYON is heaped with stones and undergrowth. | |
| The heat that falls from the sky | |
| Beats at the walls, slides and reverberates | |
| Down in a wave of gray dust and white fire, | |
| Choking the breath and eyes. | 5 |
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| The ponies straggle and scramble | |
| Half way up, along the canyon wall. | |
| Their listless riders seldom lift | |
| A weary hand to guide their feet. | |
| Stones are loosened and clatter | 10 |
| Down to the sun-baked depths. | |
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| Nothing ever has lived here; | |
| Nothing could ever live here: | |
| Two hawks, screaming and wheeling, | |
| Rouse a few eyes to look aloft. | 15 |
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| Boldly poised in a shelf of the stone, | |
| Tiny walls look down at us, | |
| Towers with little square windows. | |
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| When we plod up to them, | |
| And dismounting fasten our horses, | 20 |
| Suddenly a blue-gray flock of doves | |
| Bursts in a flutter of wings from the shadows. | |
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| Shards of pots and shreds of straw, | |
| Empty brush-roofed rooms in darkness: | |
| And the sound of water tinkling— | 25 |
| A clock that ticks the centuries off in silence. | |
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