Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO THE COLORADO DESERT, by MADGE MORRIS WAGNER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO THE COLORADO DESERT, by                    
First Line: Thou brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery
Last Line: God must have made thee in his anger and forgot.
Subject(s): Colorado (state); Desert Animals; Deserts; Food & Eating; Heat


THOU brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery,
Hot sphynx of nature, cactus-crowned, what hast thou done?
Unclothed and mute as when the groans of chaos turned
Thy naked burning bosom to the sun.
The mountain silences have speech, the rivers sing,
Thou answerest never unto anything.
Pink throated lizards pant in thy slim shade;
The horned toad runs rustling in the heat;
The shadowy gray coyote, born afraid,
Steals to some brackish spring, and leaps and prowls
Away, and howls and howls and howls and howls,
Until the solitude is shaken with added loneliness.
The sharp mescal shoots up a giant stalk,
Its centuries of yearning to the sunburnt skies,
And drops rare honey from the lips
Of yellow waxen flowers, and dies.
Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes with feet and hands,
And thirsty mouths pressed on the sweltering sands,
Make here and there a gruesome graveless spot
Where someone drank the scorching hotness and is not.
God must have made thee in His anger and forgot.





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