| From the book The Wild Rose | Legends and Fantasies
(1976 - 1978) |  |
Tenth Legend
Jacob | He was sleeping swiftly like one who has taken
a good staff and who goes
to tell of what he searched for
and didn’t find and awaits again;
that he follows, how the dust stands,
not surrounding anyone,
that the sky, round to the eye,
is not a vault but a cube, and it thunders
and has a heart within it.
He slept and slept, squeezing in his hand
the scarcely bitten piece
of space that thundered in the distance,
and of the darkness, rushing off to the east.
Others lived like a torrent.
But he could not swallow the mouthful
of news, and slept as he could,
slept disappearing, slept in the sand,
slept, scattering like the sand;
and God,
who couldn’t wait,
fell on him in exhaustion,
seized by sudden sleep. | | Richard McKane | |
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