First Law of Movement
Tonight, I cross the mountains. In the rain.
A splendid start. Hard too : because no range Is one plain barrier, one sharp upturned file.
In some ways, hills are curiously like a plain.
Elbow on elbow on, as sharp as horns (From small to great then back to small they change) Four quarters and two halves to every mile They spread. Were once one arc, but now their thorns Twine and spine and rear into the cold Unfrontiered, and seem endless in this.rain.
Beyond the mountain chain lie the realms of gold Subsiding grandly from the watershed.
A splendid finish, in a sea of sun Making the river meadows flash emerald.
Hot lilies, crystalline gloxinias Gush up like fireworks in each flower-bed.
The women match the plants. So do the men.
You see their opulent bodies through their dress, And in themselves, a kind of intense light, Located nowhere, yet it gleams like gold. While here—the quiet drizzle of early night Clucks in the roof-quoins. I sit and chafe. But why? Mice, in the skirting of the room, Sparrows that shuffle and twitter (huddled tight In the warm bran of their nests under the eaves)— The large beast and the smaller ones are safe Equally. I touch the light. One bloom Unfolds from wall to wall. It has no leaves, Being a wholly artificial flower.
Soft as a poppy, as air; it glows, in night.
Man-made and eye-made merely; a quiet shower Of saffron nothing grown from flicking down A switch : yet therefore genial and humane— Making what seemed a room locked in a tower The nucleus of a living envelope That spreads and opens and opens up my town. This is to master mountains in the plain And find that golden. Tear those tickets up (Needless to say, such trips are planned by train): Rest is a core of growth : inertia, power.
JOHN HOLLOWAY
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