Blue light and rancid slate is this strange soil Where pigmied valleys trace their cribbled way Along alluvian rims where ant eggs lay Intaglio. Here lambent blood worms coil And silver slugs with what symmetric toil Escape the summer sun's relentless ray; Red-eyed and tentacled, what queer shapes flay The light of day, till secret terrors foil The curious hand. Down falls the lifted stone Precipitate; and yet not swift enough To stay the silent flight of glowing mould -- The fabric of another world undone, Fashioned of fragile, jewelled, fire drake stuff, That nothing but a garden stone can hold. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHAMBER MUSIC: 31 by JAMES JOYCE CONTRA MORTEM: THE LEAVES by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE SMALLISH SON by HAYDEN CARRUTH SMOTHERED FIRES by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO TIME by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON IN A SWEDISH GRAVEYARD by EMMA LAZARUS |