November Surf
Some lucky day each November great waves awake and are
drawn
Like smoking mountains bright from the west
And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then
suddenly
The old granite forgets half a year’s filth:
The orange-peel, eggshells, papers, pieces of clothing, the clots
Of dung in corners of the rock, and used
Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings
of the summer
Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy:
I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then. . . . But all
seasons
The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep,
Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long
coast
Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines:
The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more
numerous,
The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed
Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains
The dignity of room, the value of rareness.
