Ina Donna Coolbrith (Ина Донна Кулбрит)
In the Grand Cañon
THE strongholds these of those strange, mighty gods Who walked the earth before man's feeble race, And, passing hence to their unknown abodes In farther worlds, left here their awful trace. Turrets, and battlements, and toppling towers, That spurn the torrent foaming at their base, And pierce the clouds, uplifting into space. No sound is here, save where the river pours Its ice-born flood, or when the tempests sweep In rush of battle, and the lightnings leap In thunder to the cliffs; no wing outspread Above these walls, lone and untenanted By man or beast, — but where the eagle soars Above the crags, — and by the gates they guard, Huge, and as motionless, on either hand, The rock-hewn sentinels in silence stand, Through the long centuries keeping watch and ward. Up from the sheer abysses that we tread, Wherein pale shadow holds her mystic sway, And night yields never wholly to the day, To where, in narrowing light far overhead, Arch capping arch and peak to peak is wed, We gaze, and veil our eyes in silent awe, As when Jehovah's form the prophet saw.
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