Oh battered blue ball, you dusty eye –
you crinkled skin – you knob of a
world,
scudding recklessly on solar winds;
falling toward a star that is
falling toward the center of a
falling galaxy: Oh my dear, sad, beaten
thing:
Home of all homes, sea of all
seas –
your secret fire, your burning nickle
and iron heart
your scabbed skin of puckered
continents,
your incontinent earthquakes, throwing
bookshelves
and glass onto Japanese sofas–
Oh dear sweet wavering poisoned
darling,
shuddering with the heave of time, crawling
with humans earnest and evil, cankered
and sublime,
shaker of faiths, herald of covenants,
flooder of basements, spinner of
magnetic webs and borealic fancies –
Oh, whirler of cloud and rainscape,
twirler of lightning, sower of darnel
and grain,
windsweeper, deathkeeper, infolder of
hallows –
my poor dear
dirty-faced boy:
come, come home: your dinner is ready,
the light is going, rest
is sweet.