III
Into the pits of my heart and brain,
My eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers, like five gardeners
Are shovelling sights, sounds, odours, savours, contacts,
While I, their master, casually nod, and most times
Stand idly by, looking at something else,
Forgetting that the work is going on
And only fully conscious of my servants
When something they move is consonant with my mood
And draws my notice; or some other thing,
More strange than usual or stronger in its impact,
Makes them exclaim and call to bid me watch.
And then in a ground of more than our dimensions
Those quietly flowing cascades of things are hid.
They are buried in those illimitable fields,
And ever as they are swallowed by the earth
The steady hours passing in procession
Walk over them and trample them well down
Out of sight, levelling all the soil.
Then some time my returning feet uncover them
(My slaves are all agog with recognition)
Or else perhaps I come and idly dig
To see what thing I can find, and out there comes
Some old form buried twenty years ago
Now called a memory.
Or marking well the place where one was put
Find it and more, drawn thither under the ground,
Tangled with others as flower-roots with roots
Into a new festoon, or one old image,
Wearing others like gems. And that's creation.