Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ERUPTION IN UTOPIA, by GENEVIEVE TAGGARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ERUPTION IN UTOPIA, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: There'll be a glassy paradise
Last Line: By the white sea -- by the red flaw. . . .
Alternate Author Name(s): Wolf, Robert Leopold, Mrs.
Variant Title(s): A Parable Of Paradise
Subject(s): Utopia


There'll be a glassy paradise
Where all will have their crowns of ice,
And all will wear their robes of snow;
And the trees will bow and the winds will blow --
And men will falter to and fro.

Men will prowl like timid beasts
Hungry after a hundred feasts
And break the bracken down in the woods,
Crash and fret and gaze and spy --
And look for nothing, low and high.

Then they will shiver, and go to sleep . . .

To sleep, to sleep, and toss and sigh --
Sprawled they will mutter where they lie,
And sit up rigid, and wonder why.

They seem to stretch and never wake:
There is a glaze they cannot break
To the world outside or the inner eye;
Oh, how they retch and cannot ache,
Oh, how they try and cannot weep --
And there's nothing to do but shiver and sleep.

This weight of nothingness is more
Than any planet stood before.
Shades and empty clouds will gather
Tons of fret in weight of weather,
Till under the burden of this lack
Obeisant earth will warp and crack,
Open a wound to bleed them terror.

Lava, lava. Slow and thick
Earth oozes, shudders, and is sick.

How they will gape at the molten stone,
Take earth's illness for their own,
And grown . . .

There they will stand, stormed by pain,
The obscene flood, the lewd stain.

Across the glassy zones of ice
Comes the long writhe and the slow hiss,
Sluggish red, the fire's kiss --
Snaky mark in paradise.

And who is this delivers them?
The serpent, yea, the very same
Who was their doom and shame.

Cast down your haughty diadem,
Your paradisal diadem,
Into the lava flame.

Now all the pent-up rivers run
In head-long silence under sun;
And miracle, oh, miracle,
The silver fluid in their veins
Is moving in a miracle:

In them their own volcanoes seethe,
And their bright bodies breathe . . .

And fixedly as in a spell
They watch the serpent writhe, and wreathe
Over the earth, and on to smite
The glassy sea-and the marble, white
Stone sea uplifts a mist of light.

Oh, what marvels they behold:
The mountains settling, fold on fold,
Cliffs that melt, and rivers gold,
And mists like angels rising slowly,
Singing holy, holy, holy.

They are not souls, but flesh at last,
And the rent earth, under the ice,
Dearer than any paradise --
Into the sea their crowns they cast,
Into the air go up their cries,
With joy they rend their snowy guise,
And now they wait, transfixed with awe,
By the white sea -- by the red flaw. . . .





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