Once / Raymond Holden

Once


Once there was silt and gravel everywhere And water running in great roaring floods – No feet on earth or wings upon the air Nor any green that could have promised buds. There was a vast ice precipice withdrawing Slower than snails to a glittering cold rest About the uncertain pole while waters gnawing At rigid rock made room for root and nest. Then some ancestral cell now lodged in me Went writing gaily under the glacier tongue Pasture upon a wild uncertainty. Now there are men. Life is no longer young. Now there is warm flesh and warm vocal breath. The only glacier is the shadow of death.