Classic Poem

How shall I come to you with this to say to you,
With soft steps saying hush in the leaves or with anger,
To say that a wind dies down in an old country,
That a storm makes rain grow like white wheat on the sand.

How shall I say there is no desert except beyond him
And that your soil is rich dark banners flying under the plow;
That the clay of his bones is a hard famine
And the taste of his words is strange, strange to the tongue.

To remember is to see goats on the hills with spring in their nostrils,
To see ripples laid sharp as shells at a thin prow;
To cry Now let there be words to come, let there be pillars of song to set over him,
Let the rain fall in fresh caverns
And roots weave the earth with trumpets of sound.

There shall be full years and you will not need him,
But in years lean as the locust you shall listen in the crops for him
And he will be there.
He is a full swinging river that has always flowed for you,
His footsteps are wild valleys thundering down under your hills.

He will be a long time in your blood.
He will be a long time coming again to you.
You shall try to gather his seed when it is blown far from the stalk.
If ever you comb the wind for him, or turn the earth for a flavor of him,
Night will have fitted a cold armor to him:
There will be flutes of stone and javelins at his fingers
And before him a wild clear sea clanging for war.