Classic Poem

Not a land, or like other lands, with trees coming out and the grass growing,
Or of waters shriveling in the wind like the faces of old women;
But however the body turns there are days when the blood in the veins even
Flows to the north stars for warmth like the cold blood of a compass,
And nights with the birch moon drifting cold as Maine water,
And the Pleiades running like snipes' feet on the rivers.
But whatever you asked of it, not the seeking or the finding of your own kind
But the Indian, the silent ways of the old men you were asking;
Days with the sun worn thin as a 'coon's skin, deep creeks where salmon took the falls,
Coming to timber towns, the frontier and to England,
To barns where your grandmother danced with her lovers, with her young heels shining like white apples in the dark;
Asking of history one Englishman not watching his own shadow,
Singing a false note, limping: one Englishman blind, naked, humming it out of tune,
To give you a taste for horseshoes and the white eyes of miners;
Whatever you asked of it, not the mountain-kids of other countries,
To jump through the flames of bonfires, or the goats to return from the hills,
Running on their black hoofs to snuff the sugar from your palms;
Nor questions to tickle and flutter the stiff wings of the goats' ears
As they titter together and slide their coarse eyes in their faces;
Nor to go back into the hills and to see them, the beasts struck dumb in the bush,
Tentative, with their eyes in the darkness like the lights of tall houses,
And their tongues tasting the sweet night, and their horned teeth crunching the thick leaves of summer,
Nor the owls crying softly in the rain.

But to go back, to go back to another country, to go back
And to say from here I can see it;
Here and here a leaf opening, here the cherry-gum dripping,
Here a stream broken through, here and here a horse run wild.