I go from the woods into the cleared field: A place no human made, a place unmade By human greed, and to be made again. Where centuries of leaves once built by dying A deathless potency of light and stone And mold of all that grew and fell, the timeless Fell into time. The earth fled with the rain, The growth of fifty thousand years undone In a few careless seasons, stripped to rock And clay—a “new land,” truly, that no race Was ever native to, but hungry mice And sparrows and the circling hawks, dry thorns And thistles sent by generosity Of new beginning.
